… they’re twice as odd as a Mobius strip

We may all have heard of a Mobius Strip – most simply as a looped band of paper with a twist – which only has a single side. That means that a pencil line drawn along the centre of the strip will return to the start, covering both “apparent” sides without crossing the edge.

Dr. Igor Rončević and colleagues at the University of Manchester in the UK have now discovered a molecule with an even stranger “half-Möbius” shape. A line drawn along the atoms of this molecule would take four circuits to return to its starting point.

By prodding the molecule with a small electromagnetic pulse, the team was able to modify the molecule’s twist – they could engineer its topology on demand – creating another way for chemists to manipulate molecules. Their experiment may be the first step towards a new way to engineer useful molecules by tuning their 3D shapes.