Hi Janet,
If you follow the directions as written, you, too, can have a
beautiful ribbon of mobius strip with two – count 'em – two
continuous colors (or textures) wrapping the strip. This I know,
not only because I’m stareing at a physical model of it right now,
but because I had a few people who e-mailed me personally to say
that they made it as well.
I couldn't get this to work as written. If you color the right half of the strip, it will be 1x6 colored on the right, not 1/2x6"
Janet, no, unless you are in a mathematically alternate universe –
when you take a one inch by six inch strip, and color the right half
(or to say it another way – right half-inch of the inch wide strip)
of the strip “long-ways”, you WILL have a 1/2 by 6 inch stripe white
on the left, and a 1/2 by six inch stripe of color on the right.
This is the “front” side of the strip. Turn the strip over (after
you’ve colored the one side of the front side) but make sure you
turn it like the page of a book. (In topology, symmetry is a
factor). Then color the back of the strip the exact same way,
stripe of white on the left, stripe of color on the right. Is your
paper strip still flat? Good. Now be patient and actually read
this out loud to yourself. “Is it now both white on the long
stripe on the left of the front, and colored on the long stripe on
the right of the front – and also white on the long stripe on the
left of the back, and colored on the long stripe on the right of the
back?” (If you can’t answer yes to this question, e-mail me
off-Orchid and I will send you photos via e-mail.)
Then you make your half-twist and voila, the white stripe from the
front lines up with the white stripe on the back, and the colored
stripe on the front lines up with the colored stripe on the back.
Tape it and you’re done.
That was either Noel or I, although neither of us used your approach.
It was neither Noel or you – I couldn’t remember exactly what Jim
had written, so I didn’t name him. That is why I said that “I
suspect that this is the method that someone referred to a couple of
days ago”. Just in case it was not the solution he was referring
to, and because I didn’t remember what he said; I was being vague in
case I was repititious.
I was never referring to a square wire or a round wire solution,
because neither would be a Mobius strip. The object that I have in
front of me is paper and is a model of a Mobius strip and IS both
continuously white and continuously colored throughout the length of
the model.
Now, unless we want to go to the trouble, for precision’s sake, to
have each person define what they meant by “adjacent” or “opposite”,
then deconstruct who was trying to answer what – well, I think that
is pretty silly…plus we could digress and devolve into
mathematical theory and topology (you know, things like
one-dimensionality is really a point of no volume in space;
two-dimensionality is really a plane with no depth in space – so a
piece of paper can never be only two-dimensional since it exists
with depth, etc.), but that, too, is pretty silly for a jewelry
bulletin board…
I just thought it was a cool and elegant and beautiful solution to a
two-colored or two-textured Mobius strip for rings or bracelets (or
maybe even torq-like necklaces…).
If you don’t want to believe it is able to be made, then don’t
make it. But if you really are just having trouble following
directions, e-mail me and I will send you photographs (I wish I
knew how to post photos to Orchid…).
–Terri
