The mathematics of taffy pullers
History and Overview
2022-07-20 v2 Dynamical Systems
Geometric Topology
Chaotic Dynamics
Abstract
We describe a number of devices for pulling candy, called taffy pullers,that are related to pseudo-Anosov maps of punctured spheres. Though the mathematical connection has long been known for the two most common taffy puller models, we unearth a rich variety of early designs from the patent literature, and introduce a new one.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1608.00152,
title = {The mathematics of taffy pullers},
author = {Jean-Luc Thiffeault},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.00152},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
23 pages, 49 figures, AMSLaTeX with Tikz macros. Contains an extra appendix compared to the published version with some more taffy pullers from the patent literature