Shoelaces come undone? You may be tying them incorrectly. Easy check: do they sit straight across your shoe, or tilt up at an angle? If the latter, you're securing them with a granny knot, which falls apart readily, but this can be fixed by a small change in the way you tie the laces. Ian Fieggen explains and demonstrates. (He also writes it out). [more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good
on Dec 5, 2011 -
53 comments
Sure, knot theory is an interesting subject with a storied past, and self-avoiding walk theory takes it a bit further in describing real-world ropes, lines and wires, but can it be usefully applied to the knotty problem of spontaneously forming tangles? Robert Matthews of Aston University has suggested that there's a simple solution to avoiding tangles in all our computer cables, headphone cords and Vectran cored double braid halyard lines: make them into loops [pdf]. It's plausible, but not proven. Enter The Great British Knot Experiment which aims to provide "compelling empirical evidence to support the Loop Conjecture – and thus for its role in solving one of life's little irritations." [more inside]
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal
on Jun 15, 2010 -
36 comments
