For years Brady's come over here and we've talked about Klein bottles and
the mathematics of one-sided surfaces. And we've talked about making them but we've
never actually made a Klein bottle. Today, in my garden, is a Klein bottle- not A Klein
bottle maker but THE Klein bottle maker: Lucas Clarke from Simon Fraser University.
And welcome to Oakland, welcome to Berkeley, welcome to California Lucas. - Oh thank you for having me.
All right, let's start off with a little bit of fire, get that fire going, we'll add a little
bit of oxygen. So starting off in the beginning like, yeah, this is cold fire. So when I say cold fire
there's only about 20% oxygen in the air. Meh the rest of it about nitrogen. So all that
orange you see there, that's actually just carbon. All the fuel that's in the line that hasn't really
fully combusted yet. And as it's going through it's getting hot and it's getting bright but
it's not burning off. Now if I want to melt some glass with that that's not going to do anything.
So we start adding a little bit of oxygen, oxygen from our tank over there. We are piling that in now
and now we're start cooking. Now that- that's a flame, that's- we're getting a nice balanced mixture of the gases
and the oxygen and everything's burning together beautifully. Now from that we're going to take
some broad stock, we're going to take some tubes. There's hundreds of types of glass; the one that
I'm particularly fond with has a little pinch of boron in it and it creates this beautiful type of glass
called borosilicate. Many of you might know it as Pyrex, Pyrex it's a brand name, but borosilicate it's
beautiful. Its coefficient of expansion - the rate it expands and we start piling in the energy -
ah that's much lower. So if I was to do it with like a coke bottle or if I was to do it with a
pane a window- or a window pane, something like that, the glass would just start exploding and
popping all over the place. But borosilicate - oh this stuff is beauty. It just absorbs the heat, it
takes it and it shifts it and it's all quite happy. Oh beautiful, so we just want to pull this closed.
So we're gonna blow a bottle, everything starts off as a bubble.
Now I want to add a little handle so I can shape the body of the Klein up.
So you notice I'm turning, always always turning. As we're heating the glass all that energy is
getting piled in; but as it's going in the gravity that's always acting on the glass - suddenly it has an effect.
So if I was to stop,
it just kind of slumps, drops down, makes things off kilter.
But now I want to make all those little seals on the inside nice and smooth.
Because glass is just like a tree or an I-beam, all of its strength is on its surface.
Now we want to add a little shape, we'll add a little form. In glass blowing there's really
only three fundamental actions that you can do: you can constrict it, you can blow it and bend it.
I'm going to cut this by just heating locally
and then the force of the flame and the surface tension of the glass makes them pop apart.
This time around I'm going to do it concentrically around the edge.
Oh you got- hey we got one hole. We're back to a hole. So it like closed off
on my side, open on the other so we got one hole.
Now we got to close it off there so we're gonna bring it back together to be how many holes?
Ah yes sing for me- sing for me. I'm gonna come in, give it a little puff, give it a little twist, open it up.
All right, we'll be able to slide in. And around and around, right on that surface, right on the top, try and
keep it nice and balanced and even. Do a little puff. Okay, so we're starting to see some of that
red coming off, we're starting to see going in. Starting to feed this in. So we preheated the thing,
and it's like, yeah, all right. Kinda come in, I'm gonna start to puff. I'm gonna blow this out,
gather it up, and slowly as it comes together we're gonna make contact with the out- or the
two lips together, I'm gonna make what's known as the ring seal. Just a little bath, nice bath of fire.
Doesn't crack on me but it might, okay.
And I'm just gonna start working that in.
And I'm gonna take a second to get rid of all those little curved edges,
remember to breathe, puff it up.
Again with our little reamer and we just kind of push it where we'd like
it. Just a gentle nudge. Now currently- now do you know, how many holes do we have?
Just little by little
heat it up, bend it round, and we'll make it work by blowing bubbles. Turn around.
Let's just give it a little tap,
you know. Bring out a little bit of that heat and we're gonna flash,
we're going to heat it up nice, smooth and-
...or even the bottle itself, it's tied around on all these ends.
Oh sometimes it moves. No, I'm gonna grab it and just kinda pull it into place.
Gonna use the uh surface tension and the gravity to pull all that out.
And I can smooth it in a bit and blend it around,
just glide it along my breath. Thick glass, it can hold on to the heat the longest. And as you blow on it
it stretches the glass, and it's the heat that allows it to move. Wow
Bit of a waiting game. I'm gonna wait for this to cool off so I can just grab with my hand, and then I'll
uh work on the other side. Probably keep this on a- yeah let's see if we can find that center-
(Brady: Cliff you must have seen quite a few thousand Klein bottles in your time,)
(does watching the birth of a Klein bottle still excite you or have you seen it- ?) - Excite me?!
Brady- Brady it's hot glass; it's more than that, it's just somebody whose craft is built into his
fingers. To to to hang around Lucas is just a joy. - There it is, it's the real deal, handmade.
Oh look at that!
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video. Thanks brilliant for supporting numberphile! - ..well the way I make these, the answer is
well sort of yes. You can fill a Klein bottle with water. - How much money do you want? So I say
I don't know? 100 bucks. He reaches into his pocket and starts counting out twenty dollar bills