hey everybody adam savage here in my cave with a show-and-tell uh with a show-and-tell and a little
bit of uh it's a little mathematics no not math more like geometry maybe not like okay hi adam
savage here in my cave with a show and tell um and i'm going to begin my show and tell by talking
about this strip of paper i have a medium weight strip of paper here and i think we can all agree
that it has two sides and four edges one two three four i recognize that like dimensionally
it is thin but we can still imagine that this is an edge it's not an infinitely narrow plane it
is a dimensional one okay i'm going to turn this into a shape that has only one side and one edge
many of you have probably seen this demo before but i remember when my dad did it for me when i
was a kid and in order to take this two-sided piece of paper this geometrical construction
and give it one side and one edge we need to join it in a loop but turn it one half turn in
that loop and this is how we create that magic so i'm going to turn it i've turned it one half loop
one half turn and i'm adding a second piece of tape over here
and uh what i have made is called a mobius strip m-o-b-e-u-s mobius named after the mathematician
uh i believe forgive me if i'm wrong i am not number file but this mobius strip
has one side and one edge and here is how we can confirm that if i take this magic marker
and i start drawing a line and i don't lift my magic marker and i just keep on drawing this line
so i am not lifting it from this piece of paper i am not lifting it i am simply dragging the
piece of paper underneath it i think you can start to see what's happening here
as i do this i'm going to end up meeting the other side of the line and here it is
i've met the other side of the line so i've drawn a line that connects to itself without
lifting it off the paper that is only one side and if i did the same thing with the edge
you would see the same thing i i don't have to sorry i'm not going to in this video you can
do it yourself it has one side and one edge now there is a specific and awesome subset
of glass blowing that delves into this kind of mathematics and it is a bottle that drifts into
the fourth dimension and is called a klein bottle um and i happen to possess one here and this is
it's a beautiful thing so the klein bottle has only one surface because well if you if
you wanted to take the magic marker and start to draw on this surface you would notice that you can
draw on the inside and the outside continuously if you allow that right here where the bottle's
neck crosses through itself it's a little fourth dimensional like malarkey but this is a
klein bottle and it has only one surface to it um this one is actually made by one of my heroes uh
and it's worth talking about the uh the person that made this because uh his name is cliffstall
as an astrophysicist and a teacher if i remember correctly uh clifford stoll was
working uh at cal in the 80s when he noticed on the computer system this is the 80s uh the the
computers connecting to each other via phone lines from around the world was brand spanking
news only a few years old and cliff was working on the computers there and noticed a discrepancy
and ended up teasing out that discrepancy and finding that there was an actual kgb hacker
trying to break into american military systems using the university computer system and he was
stealing passwords um it is an amazing case and it was uh clifford stole ended up writing
it into a book called the cuckoo's egg which is a wonderful and delightful read it is about his
uh going for his phd at the same time as he went through basically trying to educate the
fbi and anyone who would listen that this 50 cent discrepancy in the computer logs might actually
mean something much more important that everyone should pay attention to and effectively sort of
the very first uh documented case of ferreting out a hacker i'm sure there are earlier excursions but
this one is super famous it was also made into a nova documentary which is just as
delightful to watch as clifford stohl's book is to read um clifford is a technology skeptic
uh and when you read his arguments about being skeptical about what technology has done for us in
terms of social media and global outreach etc um his skepticism is firmly based in uh in in reason
i i might run my life differently than cliff does but i totally agree understand and agree
with most of his arguments about how dubious is about technology um but so i was really familiar
with clifford stoll in my late teens i read the cuckoo's egg at like 19 or 20 years old and then
i saw the nova documentary in the late 80s and then i found out he was making klein bottles
and then brady herron from numberphile came by here and he had just come from cliff's studio and
cliff sent this over to me we still have a grand unrealized plan to get together we are mutual fans
but the glass blowing of klein bottles this is about it the simplest thing there is and
people make these in all sorts of different sizes but there are also klein bottles that
are nested inside of klein bottles that are nested inside of klein bottles there is sort of no end to
the rabbit hole when you start to investigate making fourth dimensional glass blown objects
and i as somebody who has cobbled together several different careers across multiple uh
different industries over the course of my life i really enjoy clifford stoll's life story because
it does the same across a vastly different set of realities than i have been exposed to and yet you
know in his book he details this beautiful defense of his phd thesis and if i remember correctly
uh in his defense they just asked him why the sky was blue and he answered and they kept on asking
for hours and hours and hours until he was talking about it on a quantum level i must assume um
and that has stuck with me like i haven't read that book a second time but in my late teens that
that excursion really stuck with me and to find out that he's glass blowing klein bottles just
makes me super happy you never never know where you're going to end up and by the way if you're at
all curious about mobius strips there's all sorts of fun things you can do with them by cutting them
in half by adding twists and keeping on cutting there's some really remarkable things that happen
to shapes when you do that um and uh i am not sure about the public's available the public's ability
to obtain a clifford stole klein bottle but if there is a website we will link to it in the
comments below um clifford stoll uh you're one of my heroes and i say hello and thank you for this
from across the ether of the internet and uh hope we can get together soon this has been adam savage
here in my cave and fourth dimensional bottle is today's show and tell i'll see you next time
you