Klein Bottle Cartoons, Limericks, Rhymes, and Haiku

Klein's Beer, seen on the TV show, Futurama series 5, episode 3 : The Route of all Evil Seen next to "Olde Fortran Malt Liquour" (thanks to Christoph Brockmann)

Paul Cooper's beautiful illustration for Hugo Gernsback's Science-Fiction Plus magazine (1953) - The original illustration is for sale for $450 at Kayo Books in San Francisco; contact Ron Blum for information: kayo@kayobooks.com.

One sided verses: 

I like to live in my little Klein bottle.

Imagine a cylinder, stretched up'l and out'l.

Push in the bottom to link with the throttle.

You need 4 dimensions to bring this about'l.

A home that's ingenious, clever, and crafty.

I find it delightful, but a little bit drafty.

(apologies to Katharine O'Brien) 

 

A mathematician named Klein

Thought the Möbius Loop was divine

Said he, "If you glue

The edges of two

You get a weird bottle like mine."

 

This ray of from Edith Emeritz's brillaince:

I can tell by my friends' wondrous gazes

That my Klein Bottle truly amazes.

Some find my new phial

Outrageously vile,

It not only amuses, it crazes.

Deena Skolnick, Stanford University's Class of 2003 is happy with her Acme Klein Bottle:

 One day as I was sitting, merely resting at my work

There approached a friend of mine who first stared, then went berserk.

But since I'd learned in infancy that attention follows gaze,

I watched his eyes and saw they fell on a bottle to amaze.

It was, of course, none other than my Baby Classic Klein

A bottle without volume and with one side by design.

Quoth he, "Might I inquire, if I could be so bold,

As to where you have acquired this no-boundary manifold?"

"Why sure," said I, "it's no surprise, just look where you would think:

Who else could be behind this glass but Acme Bottles, Inc.?"

"Aha!" he cried and jumped for joy and rushed out and was gone

Leaving me to ponder my 3D phenomenon.

My friends, I have no moral with which to end this tale

Except to let you take a look at where they are on sale!

 

Here's an unsolicited endorsement from Adrian Anderson who bought an Acme Klein Bottle in the summer of 2000:

Having received a bottle by Klein

An Acme product quite fine

If dimensionally able

I shall place on a table

And admire for a mighty long time

Michele Denber writes::

I'm very happy to say

My Klein bottle got here today.

It's really quite fine,

This bottle by Klein

In an odd topological way.

 

From: "-s-p-e-c-t-r-u-m-"

Thinking in 4-D is hip,

But it gives my poor braincells a trip.

So I think that I ought'l

Leave Klein to his bottle;

I'll just stick with Moebius' strip.

 

To add to dimensions one more,

You just square what you had before.

So if I've got it straight

That the strip's figure-eight,

Is Klein's figure then sixty-four?

Alex Rennet (of McMaster Univ) has a poetic father:

There once was a physicist who made bottles topological,
whose surfaces defied all the senses logical;
One day in pursuit of dimensions unattainable,
using all the strength of which he was capable,
he blew so hard, one turned insideoutical.

Chris Innanen (aka Nonsanity) writes:

"This fleaker's no leaker," Roy fessed
"But all thickened solutions congest.
But decanting is quick
With no 'insides' to stick
So an Erlenmeyer Klein bottle's best!"

This one by Peter Beuret:

There once was a bottle called Klein

That had such a clever design

It would turn inside out,

Which created some doubt

When it came to decanting the wine.

 

Bill Kilner's contribution to nonorientable poetry::

When a Klein Bottle's blown out of glass
(Like a flat drawing of Mobus class)

Since the object's 4-D
If you crush it to 3

Then the cross-overs pierce where they pass.

A Haiku by Jacob and Shari Bandes:

In 4 dimensions

there is no intersection

but in 3 there is.

 

Ode on a Klein Bottle

by Edith Emeritz, With sincere apologies to Keats

Thou perfect unspoiled borosilicate manifold,
Thou alien sojourner from dimension four,
Crystal visitor, who canst thou behold
A transparent image more puzzling than before:
What Mobius loops haunt about thy fringe
Of self-intersection, or of neck,
Twisted in nonorientability?
What curves or bends are these? What aura check?
What mad pursuit? What effort to unhinge?
What zero volume vial? What wild ecstasy?

 

The following by Cliff Stoll:

Acme's Klein Bottl

Looks a lotl

Like a big ol'

Axolotl

 

The space it takes'll

Needs a tunnel

With a hole

Like a funnel.

 

Its Singularities'll

Make a circl

In it's space'l

Poly-dimensional.

 

Its sides be singl

Like its handl.

This twisty thing'l

Moebius Band'l

An Acme Manifold'l

Keep you out of troubl

 

This boundless bottl

Isn't awfl

Spheres with crosscaps

Homeomorph'll

...Cliff Stoll 10/2000 (with apologies to David McCord)

 

Mathematicians try hard to floor us

With a non-orientable torus

The bottle of Klein

They say is divine

But it is so exceedingly porus.

 

from the Space Child's Mother Goose by Winsor & Parry (a whimsical 1950's book, recently republished by Purple House Press) :

Three jolly sailors from Blaydon-on-Tyne

They went to sea in a bottle by Klein.

Since the sea was entirely inside the hull

The scenery seen was exceedingly dull.

Oliver Humpage of Bristol, England wrote these two haiku after receiving an Acme Klein Bottle:

bottle of one side holds nothing and ev'rything; no one understands

when filled with water, this four-dimensioned vessel would leak in odd ways

This image is from the Life series "Mathematics", by David Bergamini, published in 1963. The caption reads: "THE BOTTLE WITH NO INSIDE This model of a Klein bottle, which has "no inside" belongs to topologist Albert W. Tucker of Princeton University. Nobody will ever see an actual Klein bottle because it exists only in the topologist's imagination. A true Klein bottle passes through itself without the existence of a hole, which is of course a physical impossibility." I (Cliff Stoll) have written to Albert Tucker's sons, Alan and Tom. Both are also mathematicians (!). Alan, who now teaches statistics at SUNY/Stonybrook, remembers seeing this Klein Bottle in his father's office. Tom, who teaches math at Colgate University, now has this Klein Bottleat his home. One of the oldest glass Klein Bottles.

Jean-Pierre Petit has designed some wonderful new Klein Bottle derivatives, seen in his paper, TOPOLOGIE- Le retournement non trivial du tore. (C.R. Acad. Sc. Paris t. 287, 20 November 1978). Here are a few figures from this brilliant mind. Note that these are not Klein bottles - as far as I can tell, each is homeomorphic to a torus. Figure 4 is very much like the Acme double "Klein bottle" (which is really a torus, not a Kleinbot).

 Send your contributions or links to kleinbottle(AT)kleinbottleDOTcom

Acme Klein Bottles - Exclusive Purveyors of the Non-Orientable

Cliff last updated this page on May 21, 2012