We explored the Mobius loop in this week’s Curious Minds Club. The children made a straight loop and drew lines around the centre of the paper strip on the inside and the outside to prove the loop has two faces. They did the same along the edges to prove the loop has two edges. I showed they how to introduce a half twist, and how this changes the property of the new Mobius loop to only having one face and one edge.

The children cut the Mobius loop along its centre line to show that it does not fall into two pieces as expected, but becomes a loop with four half twists. I asked the children to predict what would happen if they cut a Mobius loop one third of the way in: some predicted two loops, and some predicted one twisted loop. They made the cut and were surprised to make two connected loops, one Mobius and one non-Mobius.

The next experiment was to connect together two straight Mobius loops. No one predicted that the result would be a square. Our final experiment was to connect together two Mobius loops of opposite chirality, one with a right half twist and one with a left half twist. The delightful result was two interconnected hearts!