The mathematics of taffy pullers
arXiv:1608.00152 · doi:10.1007/s00283-018-9788-4
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.
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