A Knotty Problem

A Knotty Problem

 Why do they take so much pleasure to annoy and irritate me? Why don’t they just be friends rather than insist on tying the knot at the first date? My rant was not without reason.

I had opened the drawer to get my earphones. What a mess it was! Everything was intimately tangled with each other forming one big polymorphous puzzle. Only two weeks ago I had organized the wires. I had taken them all out and laboriously separated each one and neatly arranged them back. It took the best part of two hours.

I can fully assure you, no one has opened that drawer since then. I rarely use the earphones for my mobile phone when I am at home. We are going to Hay Book Festival next week just for two days and I wanted to take them with me.

Why do the wires do that? I googled “why do the wires get tangled when left in a box”, hoping their might be a few web pages on this.  I did not expect an avalanche of theoretical and experimental work on spontaneous knotting.

 The reason for so much scientific interest is because spontaneous knotting is not just a minor irritating earphone problem; it does influence our life and our environment at many levels. It can be life threatening for the 1% of us who are born with a knotted umbilicus! Even before that, at molecular level the bending and knotting of strands of DNA and various other large proteins are absolutely necessary for the very existence of life. The knotting and braiding pattern of various synthetic polymers of large molecules have significantly increased the diversity of materials available to us to use in every walk of life. They are used in making clothes, drugs, cars, buildings; the list is ever expanding.

There is a whole branch of Mathematics dealing with Knots.  Most of the math was beyond my cognition so I looked at some practical lab papers. One by Raymer and Smith^* caught my attention.

They took various lengths of string and put them in a box which was rotated at a constant rate and then noted the number and types of knots formed. It was repeated hundreds of times and the results were statistically analysed. They described the relation between length of the string and number & types of knots formed.  What it really boils to that knots will always develop if the following criteria are met.

1)  A flexible string longer than 1.5 feet.

2)  More than one free end.

3)  Space large enough to allow some movement but not too large to prevent contact.

4)  Energy source to cause movement.

It only requires small amount of energy to make the free ends glide under and over the neighbouring string and soon the knots start developing.

It was not a poltergeist, moving my wires, just opening and closing of the adjacent drawers was enough to supply sufficient energy.

What can I do to prevent my earphones getting tangled? Following are the suggestions I found on the all wise web!

       1) Shorter length.                                      

2      2) Keep each wire in its own small bag.

3      3) Wind the wire on a spool.

4      4) Keep the ends apart.

5      5) Keep the ends together fixed to each other.

        6) Zipped head phones.

7      7) Flat wires. 

Most of them do not seem practical in day to day life unless one has a compulsive obsessive personality but then he/she already has them in colour coded sleeves, arranged alphabetically!

My salvation is to buy flat wire earphones. I hope the sound is not too flat and the price not too high. Better end this blog on this optimistic note♫

* Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string. By Dorian M. Raymer and Douglas E. Smith published in 2007 (Proc NailAcad Sd USA 104:16432—16437).