Discovery about the Möbius strip!

Check out the paper here
And a beginner friendly version here

[ApprendreSansNecessite]

I like how dumb his original mistake was. I make these more often than I would be willing to admit.

[moredac]

His child: “Daddy, why are you playing with trapezoids?”
Him: “it’s not a trapezoid, it’s a paral-… shit.”

[jondo]

Breaking:
Mathematician mistakes Trapezoid for Parallelogram!

[CineSoar]

A mobius strip walks into a bar and collapses on the nearest available stool with a sigh. The bartender asks "What's wrong bud?"
"Where do I even begin?"

[diosrightcalfmuscle]

"The proof is suprisingly complicated given how simple the question sounds" That's literally all maths is. All of it. From the simplest parts to the most realitybending things. I love this subject.

[tompcfrog]

The hilarious part is that he gave up on his proof without even once cutting a real mobius strip

[brendanward]

Ironic. He will always be remembered as the mathematician who mistook a trapezoid for a parallelogram.

[kilroy]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the term "shortest".
More accurately it is shortest length relative to the width of the paper. So we're talking about the minimal ratio beween width and length (without stretching the paper).

[swarley]

This is the genius equivalent of forgetting a minus sign

[CocoTheShihTsu]

I love when möbius said: it’s möbing time.

[davidreinhard]

Some geometry related discoveries really feel less like people grinding away for millenia at some life change mystery, and finally cracking the code, and more like having spent most of your life in a really big house and then finding a room that you've never thought to step inside and just being like, "Huh... Why have I never been in here before? Oh i didnt know this was in here!"

[too_blatant]

My guess is that he never actually cut a real mobius strip when he first tried, and so mistakenly imagined the shape a cut would make with a regular loop, not realizing that the twist would make it a trapezoid. Visualizing things in your head is hard sometimes.

[TheSimCaptain]

His next mathematical adventure is to determine how many ping pong balls he can stuff into his shorts.

[Simon-xitb]

Damn. Math is so useful. Just today, when I was buying bread, the clerk asked me if I know what is the shortest mobius strip that has three twists. I said I will get back to him. He was so disappointed I didn't know the answer. So no bread for me today. Maybe tomorrow!

[sidwirb]

This is actually something I came across in uni! Professor said you could bring in a 3x5 notecard for formulas as long as the notecard only had notes on one side. Naturally I tried to make a mobius strip out of it, but was never able to. Turns out it was mathematically impossible as 5/3 < 1.73

[daniellevy]

An actual educated mathematician with years of research, and yet he made like the dumbest mistake ever.
I love it

[WastedPo]

And then when he was finally successful, he said, "It's Mobius-in' time!"

[leafblower]

Quite interesting how the ratio is the sine and cosine for a 60 30 right triangle, idk if this makes sense cuase I worded it weird but I love how almost everything in math is connected

[Infinite]

This is useful information in case you ever find yourself fighting a Priest who can turn things inside out.

[fbkintanar]

The Möbius strip is probably the most studied nontrivial manifold, it is amazing that new things about it are still being discovered.