Why do strings tangle

Hopefully Apple will pay attention to the science of tangling — and its own patent application filed in , which proposed thicker wires to prevent bending and looping — when it decides to release new earbuds at some point in the future.

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It often indicates a user profile. There are a few things that are certain in life: death, taxes and tangled headphone cords. It seems like it takes no more than a minute for a nicely coiled pair to end up in endless knots in your pocket or bag.

But why? But no matter how neatly you wrapped them up beforehand, the cords have become a giant Gordian knot of frustration. Along with your Netflix stream inexplicably buffering and Facebook emotionally manipulating you , tangled cords are the bane of modern existence. Or maybe we can fight back with science.

In recent years, physicists and mathematicians have pondered why our cords are such jerks all the time. Through experiments, they have learned there are many interesting ways to explain the science of knots. In , researchers at the University of California, San Diego tumbled pieces of string inside boxes in an effort to find the ways that a cord can become tangled as it wanders around in your backpack. Their paper, " Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string ," helps explain how random motions always seem to lead to knotting and not the other way around.

Long floppy pieces of string can assume many spontaneous configurations. A string could be nicely laid out in a straight line. Or it could have one end crossed over some section in the middle. There in fact happen to be a lot of configurations where the string wraps around itself, potentially creating a tangle and eventually a knot. With relatively few of these random configurations being tangle free, chances are higher that the string will be a mess.

And once a knot forms, it's energetically difficult and unlikely for it to come undone. Already subscribed? Log in. Forgotten your password? Want an ad-free experience?