packaging as content

September 15, 2009

Klein Bottles

Nested Klein bottles: a bottle containing a bottle containing a bottle…

This is one of a series of glass Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett in 1995 for the Science Museum, London. It consists of three Klein bottles, one inside another. A Klein bottle is a surface which has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot properly be constructed in three dimensions. In the series Alan Bennett made Klein bottles analogous to Mobius strips with odd numbers of twists greater than one.

from The Science Museum in South Kensington

As I dimly understand the Klein bottle, it’s a sort of 3-dimensional diagram of a 4-dimensional object. In the 4th dimension the bottle would not need to intersect itself. Does the Klein bottle have any practical application in beverage packaging?

Futurama clip via Cocina y Matemáticas