viernes, 30 de diciembre de 2016

Möbius Strip and Tetra-Tetra-Flexagon

Erasmus+ students apply topological tricks

Topology is “rubber” geometry. A figure may change its shape continuously, but as long as it keeps some other characteristics as holes and knots, is regarded unchanged. As a branch of Mathematics, Topology is a mixture of Geometry and Analysis and notions like “continuous mapping” or “compactness” demand a good level of Analysis for their approach.
Even so, there are a few things to do at a very basic level suitable for High School work. We gave a try to those, on October 26th, 2015, when we had 24 visitors at our school from Vossius Gymnasium of Amsterdam, Holland (19 students and 5 teachers), members of the Erasmus+ program "Geo Future Excellence Programme" (GFEP). Five of those students and their teacher Mrs. Ingrid Kemerink joined the B2 Class in Geometry to learn about Möbius Strip and Tetra-Tetra flexagon.
The paradoxes of Möbius Strip were firstly introduced by the art of M.C. Escher, an artist from Holland, famous for his math prints. Then all students constructed quite many Möbius strips and experimented with those. They learned that they may exist surfaces with just one side (no distinction between inside and outside), that when cut in half they remain one piece and other topological paradoxes. Finally, tetra-tetra flexagon was introduced as a “magic card”. Students really enjoyed the task to reveal the hidden sides of the card and to watch the “magic pictures” reversing.







Irini Perissinaki (Mathematics teacher)
Experimental General Lyceum of Heraklion