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Unraveling of Shoelaces Studied

Accepted submission by butthurt at 2017-04-12 10:41:03 from the string theory dept.
Science

butthurt [soylentnews.org] writes:

BBC News reports [bbc.com] on research into why shoelaces become untied. According to one of the researchers,

"To untie my knots, I pull on the free end of a bow tie and it comes undone.

"The shoelace knot comes untied due to the same sort of motion.

"The forces that cause this are not from a person pulling on the free end but from the inertial forces of the leg swinging back and forth while the knot is loosened from the shoe repeatedly striking the ground."

related stories:
Untangling the Mechanics of Knots [soylentnews.org]
Useful Dead Technologies Redux [soylentnews.org]

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