I use Mobius Strips for many class activities:
- To show the connection between writer and reader
- To show the unity of rhetoric as both a tool for analyzing arguments and a heuristic for generating them
- To illustrate the irony of an individual in a society
- To demonstrate that form and content are one in good art
Basically, I use the trick whenever I want to emphasize the interconnectedness of something, to dispel myths about binaries, to force students to think with their hands.
It’s easy to have students make the strips in class. Here’s how:
- Just ask students to cut/tear a strip of paper the long way from their notebooks.
- Make a loop.
- Twist the loop just once.
- Tape/staple/glue it together.
- Now draw a continuous line on one side of the loop, stopping only when you get to the place you started.
See?
Since you like Moebius strips, I thought you and your students would like to know about my sci-fi mystery novel called: “TIME TRIP ON A MOEBIUS STRIP.”
The novel is about how a marine biologist with the help of the great grandson of Professor August Ferdinand Moebius, the inventor of the Moebius strip, enter another dimension by riding a giant metal Moebius strip inside of a giant nautilus shell that is positioned over a magnetic fault. On entering this timeless dimension they find 16 famous lost people of history as well as an angel, or goddess, (the reader has to determine which).
There is much theory on Moebius strips, time, and dimensions in the novel which is very interesting, as well as connecting links that many of these famous lost people seem to share…I was amazed by what I discovered that linked these people the goddess Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary, and roses (which they both seem to be represented by).
You can read a sample page of my novel at my blog:
http://moebiustripper.blogspot.com as well as see many Moebius strips turned into furniture, jewelry, sculptures, etc…