Cord Tanglingisms
By Daniel Miessler on July 27th, 2006: Tagged as Mathematics | Musings
I don’t understand how you can take two moderately organized cords, drop them into a bag, and then extract them like a day later and have them be in absolute knots.
It doesn’t seem mathematically possible. Where does all the motion come from? Are these things snaking through each other while I sleep?
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It doesn’t take much to tangle the cords. I suspect that it boils down to how you remove them. If you grab the end of a cord (allowing the loops of that cord to tighten as you pull), you will likely create a tangle. Take a nicely looped extension cord (100 feet is a good length for this) and drop it on the ground. It will look fairly nicely looped, but if you pick it up wrong, it’ll tangle. There is a secret to “coiling” extension cords (a sort of zig-zag gathering rather than a coiling) that prevents the twisting issues and largely prevents tangles. Similarly, looping the long cord of a vacuum cleaner in a figure 8 pattern as you gather it on the hooks rather than in a loop eliminates the twisting of the cord.
Comment by Carl M — 7/27/2006 @ 9:04 am
I was going to post what Carl said, but as he has already, I will go with my second theory… Aliens. The truth is out there.
Comment by Steve — 7/27/2006 @ 10:43 am
Awesome post, Carl. Glad to have you back. :)
Comment by Daniel — 7/28/2006 @ 12:29 am