Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 22, 2021

But, if you cut it down the middle, you could run twice as long.

If she owned a treadmill, it would be used to hang clothes (voice of experience talking).

I expect she couldn’t picture either of them. I can picture it, but my picture includes realizing that the belt’s too short to do that.

She may have run half-ast!

That. Is. Brilliant.

But the treadmill would no longer run at all!

She’d trip every revolution.

Why is it either/or?

it would run backwards

Kid’s got no mechanical aptitude whatsoever. Mechanically, the treadmill would count distance and speed the same, you’d just have to jump over a lump every lap of the belt. The theory that a mobius strip doubles the distance because it doubles the exposed surface is like expecting to run twice as far because you ran an hour on a one mile track instead of an hour on a half mile track.

Contemplating this would drive me to drink. I’d have to hit the Klein bottle.

Flippity floppity floppity flip

A mouse ran around a Mobius strip.

The strip revolved, the mouse dissolved

In a chromo-dimensional skip.

[By somebody or other a long time ago]

Well it will wear at half the rate …

I hope some of you study Möbius strips. If you cut one in half lengthwise it ends up a single strip, twice as long, but with two twists. If you cut one in thirds lengthwise you end up with two strips linked together. All because of that original single twist.

Neither, the belt would have even use all over.

Actually, the linear distance measured along the (single) surface would be the same, so she would be running at the same speed . . . . . probably zero. Or maybe “amble”.

It would run backwards.

Something of the sort was done in a story in the ’40s:http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf636

Jef Mallet’s Blog Posts

Frazz14 hrs · The unanswerable question, the key element some people are going to have to (and eagerly will) look up, the implication of exercise, the vulnerability to accusations of smugness, the broom-pushing walk-talk stock scene … ladies and gentlemen, we may have here the quintessential Frazz episode.

Since he’s talking about the belt that is already on the treadmill, it can’t be done.

I, too, can’t picture owning a treadmill.   I can walk just fine on floors and streets, and if it’s something to hang onto for balance while running full tilt that you need, I’ve got a four-wheel walker that works well, doesn’t take up half as much house room as a treadmill, and serves lots of other purposes.

I can even hang clothes on it.