Forceless Sadowsky strips are spherical

© 2018 American Physical Society. We show that thin rectangular ribbons, defined as energy-minimizing configurations of the Sadowsky functional for narrow developable elastic strips, have a propensity to form spherical shapes in the sense that forceless solutions lie on a sphere. This has implications for ribbonlike objects in (bio)polymer physics and nanoscience that cannot be described by the classical wormlike chain model. A wider class of functionals with this property is identified.