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I disagree with the merge proposal, as the "belt trick" (which I will redirect to this page) was mentioned over and over again enough in my classes that it is clearly in a league of its own as far as topological demonstrations in physics go. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:09, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This sentence is supremely unhelpful: "The plate trick is the mathematical physics reason why particles in a four-dimensional spacetime are either fermions or bosons." Can someone knowledgeable put a link to a page that talks about this more? Is it referring to the spin/statistics theorem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.124.205.185 (talk) 10:40, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I tried the setup of "The Spinor Spanner" (last link); and don't manage to do it! Instead of the third rope that is attached to the other wall I simply used my arm, obviously the point of it is that the other ropes are not allowed to cross it. However, I could not do it that way, to my great frustration. And as the belt animation also shows, the trick (if it is the same one) is done by crossing around the other end. Can please someone else either confirm this, or else help me to understand it? Harald88 (talk) 08:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for providing the beautiful animation! However, it seems to me that the top and bottom belts are not attached in the same way as the four horizontal belts. They would get tangled if their far end were fixed in place. If they are not, for some reason, it should be explained. PS: If I remember correctly from other explanations, one solution is that the top belt is attached to the top of the cube, and while on the first rotation it stays completely on top of it, on the second rotation it wraps below the cube.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.90.245.214 (talk) 04:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the same thing. I could not see how the belts at the top and bottom were not becoming twisted. Being of a suspicious nature and suspecting some sleight of animation, I copied the graphic into an editor and played it back one frame at a time. Even then it is quite difficult to follow as the belts become obscured by others, and I suspected that an 'untwist' was being performed while part of the belt was hidden. Eventually I clamped the end of an actual belt in a vice and twisted the buckle end. Sure enough if while rotating the buckle end you orbit it around the remainder of the belt at half the speed of rotation of the buckle (which is topologically the same as the animation where the belt orbits around the buckle), sure enough the twist due to the orbit annihilates the twisting of the buckle. DocFergus (talk) 13:28, 19 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You were right to be confused because that animation did not illustrate the plate trick but rather a (generalization to six ropes) of the "antitwister" principle of Dale Adams. You can read about it at Dale Adams Patent. (In the plate trick the connection is straight and untwisted every two turns of the plate, in the Adams antitwister motion the connection is never straight.) I removed the animation (you can see it at Anti-twister mechanism though it's confusing there as well because of the extraneous connections) and added a footnote to a video clip of actor Dick van Dyke performing the plate trick. The clip cannot be placed on the Wikipedia page directly because even though it would come under Fair Use it's not in the public domain. Onlinetexts (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Belt trick animation Are you really sure that the animation is not equivalent to the plate trick? The connections in the animation could be made straight by just modify how the outer ends are fixed by half a turn. I also don't understand the original complaint about the animation. All far ends seem to me to be fixed in place. —Bromskloss (talk) 22:57, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a quick way to see that the plate trick and the animation you provided are completely different, even if they do both rely on on the peculiar topology of "rotation space"). In the plate trick, your arm begins and ends straight and untwisted. In the animation, no rope is *ever* straight and untwisted. Onlinetexts (talk) 05:23, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please choose an animation which can be stopped. Having flickering stuff at the edge of the field of vision makes it impossible for some people, including me, to read the article without getting extremely stressed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:EE:C731:D200:A98B:E569:571E:BA9B (talk) 09:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
