Klein bottle bottle opener

Yes, it's $72. But this 3-D printed metal sculpture/bottle opener is fantastic. And so is its marketing copy.

The problem of beer That it is within a 'bottle', i.e. a boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphic to the sphere. Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or "wild" spheres, but smooth manifolds, they separate 3-space into two non-communicating regions: inside, containing beer, and outside, containing you. This state must not remain.

Read the rest of the product description and, you know, maybe buy the bottle opener, too. If you're feeling spendy.

Via Cliff Pickover

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: beer • expensive stuff • math • Science • sculpture

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http://profile.yahoo.com/PVIITSL3WOOXL5LXROMMTHWHHY Sean

THIS STATE MUST NOT REMAIN!! This is why I studied science. Thank you science muse.
Paul Renault

Missed it by THAT much: it could’ve/should’ve been a Sierpinski-Klein Bottle Opener.
mrtut

What, I thought it only opens in the fourth dimension?
MJSS

That copy suggests something false, namely that a wild sphere could potentially fail to divide 3-space into two disconnected regions. The Jordan-Brouwer separation theorem states that *any* sphere divides 3-space into two disconnected regions.

However, if the sphere is wild, those regions might not be simply connected (that is, there might be a loop in 3-space which doesn’t intersect the sphere, but which can’t be shrunk to a point without passing through the sphere).
Greg Miller

Glad to notice “A tip of the manifold” to Clifford Stoll at the bottom of the page, good guy.
- http://www.kleinbottle.com CliffStoll
  
  Thanks!
ldobe

Anyone else read the headline and think it meant something to the effect of “a device for opening Klein bottles”?
- dragonfrog
  
  How would you know whether such a device had worked?
  - jackbird
    
    You’d be on the other inside.
    - ldobe
      
      A Klein bottle has no inside of any kind. It’s literally impossible to contain anything in a true 4D Klein bottle. Similarly to how it’s impossible to write on the “rear surface” of a Möbius strip.
      
      At least that’s how I understand it. And there’s a strong chance that I’m just very wrong, and sound like a fool. Feel free to correct me with a source if this is the case.
      - Limao Luo
        
        No, you’re right, but jackbird was making a joke ;]
imag

That is one of the great product descriptions of all time.
Punchcard

I totally want one.

Not at that price though. At this point 3-D printing for tchotchkes is quite absurd. I’ll wait for the die-cast version made for cents on the dollar soon to be sold at my local science museum gift shop.
- Clevername
  
  I don’t think you could make an ordinary mold for that. Lost wax might work, but how would you make the wax bit?
  - Punchcard
    
    I’d cast it in halves.
http://www.facebook.com/dpease Dave Pease

Bathsheba Grossman makes some cool stuff.
Helvis

I can’t be the only one who immediately thought of Jim Woodring when I saw this!!
silkox

I’ve been keeping an eye on 3-D printing for years, and it seems like only yesterday it was possible to buy a kit of parts to assemble into a printer (Makerbot?) for about $500. Does this exist any more?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=26109648 Jim Davison

I fundamentally reject any 4th dimensional shenanigans that might allow the beer the enter my body without first passing my lips.