Cambridge, Mass. (CBS CONNECTICUT) — Although initially setting out to create rubber strings for an imaging project, researchers figured out how to create a shape rarely found in nature: the “hemihelix.”

The three-dimensional discovery of the hemihelix actually looks like the tangle of a phone cord that has been twisted the wrong way until it works itself into a kink. But the Harvard University researchers who stumbled upon the structure are looking into nanodevices, sensors, resonators and other materials that could utilize the natural kinks in their design.

The scientists hope to reproduce the hemihelix – which is a “perversion” among three-dimensional helices, similar to corkscrews or Slinky toys – except the spiral (chirality) has been twisted.

Have you seen the new shape in town? It’s been named a #hemihelix by Harvard scientists http://t.co/seQ2Kbod8F pic.twitter.com/gAXPZ0ISqL — GlasgowScienceCentre (@gsc1) April 30, 2014

“Once you are able to fabricate these complex shapes and control them, the next step will be to see if they have unusual properties; for example, to look at their effect on the propagation of light,” Katia Bertoldi, associate professor of applied mechanics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), told PLOS ONE.

The scientists attempted to make two-dimensional springs by pulling on strips of rubber that would simply bend, David R. Clarke of SEAS explains in a Harvard news release. “We expected that these strips of material would just bend—maybe into a scroll. But what we discovered is that when we did that experiment we got a hemihelix and that it has a chirality that changes, constantly alternating from one side to another.”

The reversals in the spiral had likely not been found before because the materials used in these experiments would often just break apart.

The researchers say that the three-dimensional hemihelix can be reproduced because “there is no randomness,” and that one hundred of the twists to the original spirals would “always perform exactly the same way.”

And they are confident the results can be reproduced to evaluate additional applications for the new hemihelix.

“Simply by changing geometry, you can design this whole family of springs with very different behavior with predictable results,” Bertoldi said in a Harvard news release.

Clarke and Bertoldi say the findings could allow for the fabrication of a series of three-dimensional shapes built from flat parts.

“Intellectually, it’s interesting—and we believe it is significant too,” Clarke says. “There are a variety of complex shapes in nature that arise as a result of different growth rates. We stumbled quite by accident on a way to achieve fully deterministic manufacture of some three-dimensional objects.”