• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

This Is Why Your Cables Keep Getting Tangled

November 2, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

That old saying about death and taxes being the only certainties in life has been disproven by physicists, who have revealed that our existence is governed by a third – and equally terrifying – inevitability: all of our cables are doomed to become tangled.

This awful discovery was made in 2007, and was recognized with an Ig Nobel Prize the following year. To reach their horrifying conclusion, researchers repeatedly dropped pieces of string of varying lengths into a box, which was then spun round for a few seconds.

Advertisement

After conducting more than 3,000 trials, the study authors found that the string emerged from the box with a knot in it roughly 50 percent of the time. Crucially, they also noted that the probability of a string becoming knotted depended on its length, with those less than 46 centimeters (18.1 inches) long almost never tangling up.

Above this length, however, the chance of a knot forming increased dramatically. Explaining this outcome, the researchers reveal that 46 centimeters was the minimum length required for a string to be able to coil once around the box.

Once coiled, the end of the string is able to move randomly over or under the adjacent section, resulting in a vast array of different tangly configurations. As the string braids itself, knots form, and because unknotting is both statistically and energetically unlikely, the overall picture moves naturally towards greater complexity.

As the length of the string increases, more coils form, which means the probability of knotting becomes even greater. Incredibly, the researchers found that every single prime knot with seven crossings or fewer formed naturally in their agitated strings, with some of the more complicated knots containing up to eleven crossings.

Advertisement

However, the probability of knotting decreased for strings longer than 150 centimeters (59 inches), as these pieces became too confined within the box and didn’t have enough space to move around and become braided. According to the researchers, this same principle may explain why umbilical cords rarely get tangled up within the restricted space of the womb.

What all this means is that earphones placed inside a pocket or bag are destined to become knotted, unless the cord happens to be so long that there simply isn’t enough space for tangling to occur.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. No ‘magic wand’ to fix Lebanon crisis, new prime minister says
  2. RepAir Carbon realised fuel cell tech could be applied to CO2 capture — now they plan to scale
  3. Brazil’s Ex-President Bolsonaro Investigated For “Harassing” A Humpback Whale
  4. 27 Marine Species Discovered To Glow, From Octopus To Boxer Crabs

Source Link: This Is Why Your Cables Keep Getting Tangled

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version