This is an old video I made showing how to make a Slinky look like a Klein bottle. It’s the easiest way of making a Klein bottle that I know of!
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The Aperiodical
Welcome to The Aperiodical. The Aperiodical is a new maths magazine/blog aimed at people interested in mathematics who want to read stuff. We post news stories related to maths, opinion pieces, interesting things we’ve found, accounts of monthly MathsJams, maths videos, and feature articles, as well as posts from our own blogs. We also host the Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly blogging carnival.
Today is our launch day, and it’s also the birthday of Felix Klein, so we’ve got a new feature article, Klein: Outside the Bottle, as well as a video about the Klein Bottle by Matt Parker, Stand-up Mathematician, and our own Katie Steckles. We’ll be hosting an online Google+ Hangout today (25/4) from 6pm-6.30pm, with Christian and Katie, for anyone who wants to speak to us and find out more.
The editors of The Aperiodical are:
Peter Rowlett – Mathematician Errant, podcaster, and usually the most bearded member of the team;
Katie Steckles – Maths Communicator, hair dye fan, and currently the most qualified member of the team;
Christian Perfect – Group theorist, computery type, koala fan, and the tallest member of the team.
We started the site as a shared blogging outlet, and it grew out of our desire to have a place on the web where we could keep up to date with what’s going on elsewhere, and to share the mathematical things we do. We’re not funded to write here, and all of the work we do on the site is in our (increasingly rare) spare time.
Content is aimed at the mathematically literate. This doesn’t mean knowledge of advanced mathematics is required, but we aren’t going to rewrite articles to avoid mentioning mathematical terms and we won’t go too far out of our way to explain things which are easily googled. We know that nobody is expert in all aspects of mathematics but we aren’t going to be afraid to mention stuff that doesn’t come up until university. We’re not keen on unhelpful attention-grabbing headlines: if the press release says “Alex the Parrot Was A Mathematical Genius” when the story is “Alex the parrot could count to eight”, we’ll use the latter. That said, this is just a place to enjoy maths. Let’s be smiley mathematicians.
We’re very keen to publish reports, exposition, videos, or anything mathematical and interesting that you want to share. If you’ve got something you want to share, or just have an idea for something, please send it in.
Please feel free to enjoy our site, leave comments on our articles and generally make yourself at home. We’ll try to keep posting things here that you want to read, and in return please tell all your friends about us. We have RSS feeds for all the different sections, and we’re also on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Klein: outside the bottle
If you’ve heard of Felix Klein, it’s probably due to the Klein bottle, that strange four-dimensional object that is the subject of a new video here on The Aperiodical starring Katie Steckles and Matt Parker. Who is Klein and, apart from the bottle, what did he do?
Klein’s Times obituary records that he would point out “with a smile” that his date of birth comprised three squares of primes. So then, I will refer to his birth as taking place on the $( 5^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ day of the $(2^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ month in the year $43^2$ in Prussia. You might like to notice that today is the $( 5^2)^{\textrm{th}}$ day of the $( 2^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ month as well, so it is the 163rd anniversary of Klein’s birth.
Top N Facts about the Klein Bottle
In honour of Felix Klein’s birthday, Matt Parker and Katie Steckles investigate the amazing surface which bears his name.