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).
