Sand sculptures

Went to the beach to check out the sand sculpture competition. To be honest, it was a bit disappointing thought the one in the picture above was amazing! Love the typical esherian concept, a cow lo0king in a mirror which is looking on to itself in another mirror so you see infinite number of cows looking into a mirror .Another sculpture tries to portray the mobius strip but not successfully. A mobius strip is a truly amazing strip with one side. here is a proper use of wiki

"The Möbius strip or Möbius band is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It is also a ruled surface."

"The Möbius strip has several curious properties

A model of a Möbius strip can be constructed by joining the ends of a strip of paper with a single half-twist. A line drawn starting from the seam down the middle will meet back at the seam but at the "other side". If continued the line will meet the starting point and will be double the length of the original strip of paper. This single contiguous curve demonstrates that the Möbius strip has only one boundary.
If the strip is cut along the above line, instead of getting two separate strips, it becomes one long strip with two full twists in it, which is not a Möbius strip. This happens because the original strip only has one edge which is twice as long as the original strip of paper. Cutting creates a second independent edge, half of which was on each side of the knife or scissors. Cutting this new, longer, strip down the middle creates two strips wound around each other."

MC Escher depicted this concept in his famous litograoph where you see red ants walking on a mobius strip, for an indefinate period of time. The endless ring shaped band has usually two distinct surfaces, take for example one of the cancer bands that most of the ppl wear, you can pait the inside and the outside with two different colours of paint. However on the mobius strip nine red deadly ants crawl one after the other traveling both the foront adn reverse side of the strip. Therefore the strip only has one surface and you cannot paint the front and reverse in two differentr colours of paind AS theres only one surface.

Here is a video I found which shows how to make a mobius strip and it also demonestratees the characteristics of the mobius stip ( incase my explanation is not good).



No Magic At All: Mobius Strip - The best video clips are right here

A mobius strip is not jsuts a mathematical phonemonen but it has also been used in practice. Giant mobius strips have been used as conveyor belts since "each side" gets the same amount of wear. Another application involves the continuous-loop recording tapes (to double the playing time).

Escher has used the mobius strip in a variety of his lithographs. I wont put them all here as it will take forever. They are worth the time so I advise eveyone to go see them at the M.C.Escher museum in The hague.