[paul.fr]

either in science or engineering?

[DoctorBeaver]

Get a hamster. Put Blu-Tack on its paws. Place aforementioned hamster on a rigid Mobius strip & it will entertain itself for hours  []

[Bored chemist]

Long ago when computers didn't do what you told them, my dad had some software for some job or other that produced a huge long list of stuff then the data he actually wanted. The stuff was only a few characters. the real data was a line or so of text.
He used to send the data to the printer in order to see the stuff he wanted. But, before he printed it he got a few sheets of paper and stuck them together in a loop. That way the printer wasted a lot of ink but not much paper. My brother and I thought he should have looped the paper into a mobius strip so that the ink was more evenly distributed.
Does that count as "useful"?
What about insipring poetry?

A mathemetician named Klein
thought the Mobius trip was divine.
He said "if you glue
the edges of two
you get a weird bottle like mine".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle

[eric l]

I remember the days of belt driven machines - OK, event in those days, they were fit for the museum of industrial archeology, but some of them still worked fine (late 1950's that was).  Sometimes the belts were in the shape of the Mobius-strip.  Not only did that allow for an other sense of rotation (driving axle versus driven axle) but it also made the driving belt wear out more evenly.

[Gasparri]

either in science or engineering?

 There are many. Windmills and propellers. If you make from bimetal makes
 a thermometer, made from organic fiber makes a humidity meter. So yeah, the mobius band and it's extensions can make a complete weather
station. Fractalized mobius fits mant patterens.

[Bored chemist]

Lat time I looked, none of those used a mobius strip.

[Geezer]

I remember the days of belt driven machines - OK, event in those days, they were fit for the museum of industrial archeology, but some of them still worked fine (late 1950's that was).  Sometimes the belts were in the shape of the Mobius-strip.  Not only did that allow for an other sense of rotation (driving axle versus driven axle) but it also made the driving belt wear out more evenly.

Hey! My lathe (Southbend 9") has a leather drive belt and it's working just fine in my workshop. Mind you, that lathe is even older than I am []
Actually, in some situations flat belt drives have some real advantages over gears. For one thing, they are very quiet.

[Gasparri]

Lat time I looked, none of those used a mobius strip.

  You looked? Try here:

  There area various other vids on the subject and practical
  applications are numerous.

[Bored chemist]

I looked
And, like I said, there are no windmills, propellors, thermometers or hygrometers.

There was just some bloke being amazed that if you cut a strip of paper in half you get two copies of it (ie 2 strips of paper) and that this is true even if tyou glue a few pieces together.
He then went on about some "mobius made from 5 elements" in which he had coloured the different sides.
Well, since the point about a mobius strip is that it hs 1 side...

Can you guess how impressed I am?

[JP]

I didn't know of any, but the wiki sayeth yes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip#Occurrence_and_use_in_nature_and_technology

Actually the first couple of ideas are pretty cool.  You can use it so that you don't wear out one side or get twice the surface area of something that has to continuously loop around, such as an escalator or a recording tape.

[Gasparri]

I looked
And, like I said, there are no windmills, propellors, thermometers or hygrometers.

There was just some bloke being amazed that if you cut a strip of paper in half you get two copies of it (ie 2 strips of paper) and that this is true even if tyou glue a few pieces together.
He then went on about some "mobius made from 5 elements" in which he had coloured the different sides.
Well, since the point about a mobius strip is that it hs 1 side...

Can you guess how impressed I am?

  Would a mobius band with only 1/4 twist impress you?

  Fact is that 1/2 twist thing is just one way. There are
  others and totally equal to the origional in all aspects.

[LeeE]

Would a mobius band with only 1/4 twist impress you?

No more than one with a 1/3 or 1/5 etc. twist.  But you're not talking about Mobius strips here, which only have two sides.  If you use something that has a triangular or square cross section then you only need to twist it through a third or a quarter to line one face up with the next.  After doing that, of course, you end up with a single face, as you do with a strip.

Who wants to work out what happens when you twist a triangluar cross section band through 2/3 ?   []

[Bored chemist]

I liked the symbolism of a mobius wedding ring- the two become one idea is sweet.
The use of half a twist  on belts and such to even out wear and tear has already been noted.
The non-inductive wiring is a neat idea too. What I don'tsee is any practical purpose to the bits of coloured paper in the youtube vid.

[Gasparri]

I liked the symbolism of a mobius wedding ring- the two become one idea is sweet.
The use of half a twist  on belts and such to even out wear and tear has already been noted.
The non-inductive wiring is a neat idea too. What I don'tsee is any practical purpose to the bits of coloured paper in the youtube vid.

  The reason some see nothing of value is their limitations in the abstract thought process. They are a linear thinkers. What is perfectly obvious is hidden by illusion. Perhaps if we modify our abstract and flatten it out for those who are bound to
flatland we can provide them with a shadow of a greater dimension
and then they can understand the otherwise untrappable facts.

 So, to do that we start with flat sheets, divide them such that
 an odd number of elements are formed, then join the elements
 with a half twist to each, we get two flats each the opposite
 of each other. When we curl the flats onto circles what is formed
 is a two side mobius whose inside half's are opposite the outside
 half's. Formed is a tubular object that forms an iris who's
 diameter is controllable by rotating the ends. I call this thing
 The Bernoulli Mobius - A venturi in flat land.

 

 Open the mind a little a take a look around as there is much
 more to understand than deny.

   

[Bored chemist]

No doubt, if you had come up with practical applications you would have mentioned them rather than just saying I'm unimaginative.

[Geezer]

How about a mobius toilet roll? Naw! Forget it. Perhaps not such a good idea.

[Bored chemist]

Putting "mobius" into Google's patent search comes up with quite a few interesting ideas.
Conspicuous by their absence are the "mobius toilet roll" and the "Klein-bottle condom".
I thought I was joking with that last idea. It seems that truth is stranger than fiction.
http://lib.mexmat.ru/books/694/s3

[Gasparri]

No doubt, if you had come up with practical applications you would have mentioned them rather than just saying I'm unimaginative.

  Well, what would you call a bored chemist? I'd call him my brother.
  My brother was senior research chemist at BASF Freeport. If chemist
  were not exposed to chemicals they'd be theorist. At least chemist
  do something useful but be careful eating dinner at their house
  especially if they are cooking Italian.

  As for the mobius stuff, yes there are many extensions of the concept that can do useful things. There are others that are giving quantum
mechanics a new wrench to tighten nuts with. Even the lowly electron
has gone mobius on us and has a new hairdo. Hey, that's not my idea
it's some physicist who undid my magnet stuff and replaced it with
electron stuff.

 I have put up many videos on mobius extension and even put the
 circular 3D mobius to work as an airplane that turns into a
 helicopter.

 You wanted to see a mobius windmill:
 

 Even kites and airflow patterns can be 'mobiusized'
 

 All in all these extensions merit more than a casual glance
 because even in chemistry there is plenty of strange
 to go around. That 1 pi, 2 pi... 8 pi structural series
 and the new ideas concerning carbon go hand in hand.

  Buckeyball is the sport of real he men.