A Moebius Ballet

Posted by jns on 30 November 2007

I learned about it from Science News Online (here), but evidently it has been on its way to becoming a mini-phenomenon since it was posted on YouTube in June, 2007.

It’s a short animation of some mathematical concepts, called “Moebius Transformations Revealed“. To quote from the creators’ website (here):

Möbius Transformations Revealed is a short video by Douglas Arnold and Jonathan Rogness which depicts the beauty of Möbius transformations and shows how moving to a higher dimension reveals their essential unity.

It does do what it claims it does, although it doesn’t go so far as to suggest what we learn from understanding their essential unity, nor what we might do with our new understanding. Perhaps I’ll have that “aha!” later on.

Nevertheless, it’s a very pretty little film (2:32 long), and the music (Robert Schumann, a movement from Kinderscenen, for piano) seems unusually well suited.

But it’s better that you just have a look rather than listen to me talk about it.