REAL LIFE NEWS: WHY SHOELACES COME UNDONE
by Hazed
Scientists have figured out why your shoelaces come undone and need to be retied. It turns out that the force of a foot striking the ground causes the knot to stretch and relax, while a second force caused by the swinging leg acts on the ends of the laces.
Mechanical engineers at University of California Berkeley used a slow-motion camera, and in a series of experiments found “shoelace knot failure” happens in a matter of seconds, triggered by the complex interaction of those two forces.
Good to know, but rather a trivial issue, you might think – except that the researchers say that the understanding of shoelaces can be applied to other structures, such as DNA.
Lead researcher Christopher Daily-Diamond said: “When you talk about knotted structures, if you can start to understand the shoelace, then you can apply it to other things, like DNA or microstructures, that fail under dynamic forces.
“This is the first step toward understanding why certain knots are better than others, which no one has really done.”
Unfortunately, they can offer no solution as to how to stop your laces coming undone!
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39573642
