Mechanical engineers at the University of California at Berkeley have researched the structure of a knot to figure out why certain knots on shoelaces fail. Lead researcher Christopher Daily-Diamond states:

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.

The scientists used slow-motion cameras for their experiments and recorded things such as a person tying their shoelaces and then jogging on a treadmill. Hopefully this research does help out with other things such as the ones that Christopher mentioned. So what is the actual cause of knot failure in a shoelace? Christine Gregg, the co-author if the study, states:

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.

It’s an interesting idea to study why the knot on a shoelace fails, I’m sure many people have often wondered why they keep having to retie their shoelaces.

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