Taffy, Trees, and Tangles
History and Overview
2025-11-26 v1 Combinatorics
Geometric Topology
Abstract
We study the relationship between three combinatorial objects -- a taffy pulling machine, the Calkin-Wilf tree of all fractions, and Conway's rational tangles. After introducing these objects, we develop a taffy analogue for Conway's characterization of rational tangles, and we give a direct geometric connection between rational tangles and taffy pulls.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.19461,
title = {Taffy, Trees, and Tangles},
author = {Neil J. Calkin and Eliza Gallagher and Ben Gobler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19461},
year = {2025}
}