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The Strip Of Love

One can easily fall in love with a Mobiüs strip. You can make one by taking a strip of paper — say about half a metre long and 4cm wide — and giving it a half twist before joining the ends together with glue.

E4

Believe me it possesses some truly amazing properties. Firstly, even though it looks two-sided it has only one side. Run your finger along the top surface all the way around and you’ll find halfway through that you’re on the lower surface — without having gone over the top. Continue and you’ll end up where the whole love affair began. Similarly it can be shown that it has only one edge.

That’s not all. If you now cut along the entire length down the middle, you’d have not two strips half the size, but one twice the length and interlocked. Even weirder outcomes happen if you cut along not down the middle but a third way out to any side. Try it and then try to wrap your mind around it. Almost all geometrical structures are found in nature but for some reason the Mobiüs strip is not. As if all of this wasn’t difficult enough to squeeze our thoughts around, there’s also a three dimensional version available called a Klein bottle, named after the German mathematician Felix Klein who first described it in 1882. Basically it’s just two Mobiüs strips joined together. But talking about it is simply not interesting enough, so look it up in Google images and enjoy!

Still not interested? Not a problem. Check this out instead. Famous French filmmaker François Truffaut once received a greeting card from Alfred Hitchcock with the following inscribed: “Wishing you a happy ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.” What do you think it meant?

DEAR MS

(The problem was: “What happens if several people use the same counterfeit note to pay off debts, till the note finds its way back to the first person who then discovers it’s a fake? What’s lost as a result of this series of transactions, and by whom?” — MS)

Don’t-Take-Note-Dept:

Nobody lost. If A was the first person, he did not lose because he paid off a debt with a fake note and was repaid with the same note for a loan given by him. All others in the chain were similarly placed.

•R Viswanathan, rviswanathan2001@yahoo.com

The first person will be the loser as he is the last one in the cycle to receive the fake note. The total value will be equal to the amount printed on the fake note.

•Ramesh, rameshkumarthayyil@gmail.com

(And the other problem was: “If you were to grab a live electric wire with your hands, chances are you probably won’t be able to release it. Why not?” — MS)

Live-Wire-Dept:

The live electric wire sends a current, which causes the muscles in the hand to spasm and contracts them. Therefore we are not able to let go.

•Agnimitra Srivatsav, flipendosmithson@gmail.com

 When an electric current passes through the body the muscles contract. So when a live wire is grabbed, the finger muscles contract and grab the wire more firmly involuntarily. Further the biceps also contract throwing one on towards the live wire. A normal precaution before grabbing a metallic handle of electrical machinery is to touch the handle with the back of the fingers to test it for faults.

•Rajamani, rajamani1933@yahoo.in

 That’s why electricians check out a live connection with the back of their hands so that if a current is there it merely makes the fingers curl away from the source. — Dhruv Narayan, dhruv510@gmail.com

ENDGAME(S)

1.  In a book with page numbers from 1 to 100, some pages are torn off. The sum of numbers on the remaining pages is 4,949. Which pages are torn off? — (Submitted by Sheikh Sintha Mathar, sheikhsm7@gmail.com)

2.  During rocket launches why do they count backwards from 10, 9, 8 . . . to zero and not the other way around from zero to 10?

(To get in touch with Mukul, mail him at mukul.mindsport@gmail.com)

• Mindsport