Chain-link bagel? Meet Möbius doughnut

Education Science
Chain-link bagel? Meet Möbius doughnut
mobDough_2.jpg

In response to guest author George Hart’s “Mathematically-correct breakfast” piece in last week’s inaugural “Math Monday” column, the folks at Serious Eats New York wanted to know “Why should the bagel get all the geometric jollies?” So they made themselves a “Möbius doughnut.” Sweet.

(The finished product is actually NOT a Möbius strip, but two interlocking rings, just like the bagel, with each half achieved via a Möbius cut.)


And Now, We Present the Mobius Doughnut

6 thoughts on “Chain-link bagel? Meet Möbius doughnut

  1. Adam Knapp says:

    Um, I’m not totally sure what you mean by Mobius cut. That would seem to imply that there is a non-orientable surface here – which there isn’t since there is a full twist in the band, not a half twist. The mathematician you want to name this one after is Hopf. For the doughnut and the bagel, the boundary of the cut and the resultant bready links are Hopf links.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopf_link

  2. George Hart says:

    To clarify: A Möbius strip is just a surface; it has no thickness. You can make a paper model of it by taking a strip of paper and giving it a twist before joining the ends, so the front and back become the same side, and so there is only one side. If you give the paper strip two such twists before joining the ends, you have a “two-twist mobius strip” which still has two sides. The donut shown here (and the linked bagel on which it is based) is cut along a surface which is a two-twist mobius strip. But I wouldn’t use the term “Möbius donut.”

  3. Doug says:

    There is the the theory of the mobius, a twist in the fabric of dough, where eating becomes a loop, from which there is no escape.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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