Knotty Problems

November 6, 2011 3:01 PM

Science through yarn: Wooly Thoughts. The Home of Mathematical Knitting, including knitted klein bottles and hyperbolic planes. The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art (previously). Much, much, more on knitting, crochet and quilting used to visualize complex theories in topology, probability, chaos and fractals.

Inspired in part by the Strong Connected Components podcast (Previously), which has featured interviews with mathematicians and knitters Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer, founders of the aforementioned Wooly Thoughts, and Daina Taimina, author of "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes". (Tangentially elated: Nerdigurumi, geek culture crochet patterns.)

posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul (8 comments total)

Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes won the 2009 Diagram Prize for the "oddest book title" of the year. A list of previous winners is at Wikipedia. Sadly, for those of us who like math books with interesting titles, Emmanuel Kowalski's The Large Sieve and its Applications was defeated for the 2008 prize by The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.
posted by madcaptenor at 3:26 PM on November 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

I love this stuff. Thanks for sharing. Daina Taimina just gave a talk at my university on Friday. I was a little surprised that it wasn't better attended. It's fascinating stuff.
posted by monkeymadness at 3:34 PM on November 6, 2011

You receive ten credits for this cool post and two demerits for the amusingly unconscionable pun in the title
posted by clockzero at 4:27 PM on November 6, 2011

The hyperbolic crochet coral reef has been discussed previously (though I don't think it had its own website at that time).
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:19 PM on November 6, 2011

Insanely stunning -- thanks
posted by prettypretty at 6:43 PM on November 6, 2011

I guess this music video fits in (sort of) here.
posted by progosk at 10:23 PM on November 6, 2011

If you can knit a Klein bottle, can you have a line of Klein clothing? This would allow one to be dressed and nude at the same time.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:09 AM on November 7, 2011 [2 favorites]

I just disappeared into "Wooly Thoughts" for more than an hour. Love this, thanks for posting!
posted by torisaur at 5:07 PM on November 7, 2011