When geometry nerds fail to become playground designers, or, Why math is important in real life as long as real life is populated by math geeks.

This evening I went on a little drive/walk. I'd spent most of my day at home and needed to get out for awhile, and it was really nice outside. I drove down Green Road, and then parked at the Green Road Chapel and soon found myself a couple blocks away in a little neighborhood park with trees and grass and benches and a small playground. For quite some time I'd actually been meaning to blog about this park if I could every manage to find myself there with a camera in hand. That's because when I first discovered the park on a run a year or so ago, right there at the edge of the playground was a Möbius strip jungle gym. How cool is that?


But as I slowed down to look more closely, I quickly realized that it's actually a fake Möbius strip jungle gym. Imagine climbing around it and you'll see. A true Möbius strip is a one-sided surface. The loop should have an odd number of twists, so that if you started climbing at the very top, you would get all the way around and find yourself now on the underside; keep climbing and you'd make your way back to the top, having traversed the entire surface without having to switch from one side to the next.


The playground structure, however, has two twists, and therefore two sides. It feels like a cheat, especially since it's plastered with labels that call it the Infinity Climber. Math person that I am, it looks like something that ought to make me feel happy every time I pass it. Instead, though I pass it all the time, I just feel sort of sad and disappointed.

Well, okay, and also a little bit smug.