There is this incredible glass figure on the front of my Calculus textbook, I searched online for what this figure is called and the formula for creating it, but I can't find it. I think it is a variation of the Klein Bottle.
Here is the image:
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1Could it be just a more elabourate mobius strip? – anak Jun 22 '15 at 19:16
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Looks like a fancy glass/metal Mobius Strip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip – Xoque55 Jun 22 '15 at 19:17
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It looks like an umbilic torus:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Umbilic_Torus.png
From Wikipedia.
Zev Chonoles pointed out another cover with the equation for the umbilic torus:
HDE 226868
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2It looks like you're right: in the latest edition they have the parametric equation for the umbilic torus on the cover, and presumably they've kept the same shape on every edition. (Interestingly, the Wikipedia article cites Larson and Edwards for that parametric equation.) – Zev Chonoles Jun 22 '15 at 19:41
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@ZevChonoles Cool; I had checked other versions of the textbook but I hadn't seen that one. – HDE 226868 Jun 22 '15 at 19:42
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It seems to me to be a thickened (and rather heavily stylized) Möbius strip, i.e., a torus with square cross section that is given a one-half twist.
I made this image just now using the code from my math.SE question, Drawing a thickened Möbius strip in Mathematica
Zev Chonoles
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It appears that the Larson shape has three sides, not four. That would make it a triangular cross-section, not a square one. I don't see how one could consider a triangular cross section to be any kind of Mobius Strip. – Jun 23 '15 at 03:41