MIT Physicists Have Finally Cracked Overhand Knots

An anonymous reader writes: Knots are indeed a relatively ancient art, a technology developed across centuries of trial and error and some very old, intuitive notions of symmetry and elegance. (The more 'ugly' or random a knot looks, the less likely it is to function well.) The basic physics and mechanics of knots are, however, relatively unstudied scientifically. If a knot works then it works—what more is there to ask? Quite a bit, it turns out. In a study recently accepted for publication in the Physical Review Letters, engineers at MIT and Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris offer a new fundamental theory of knots based on relationships between topology, the mathematics of spatial relationships, and the basic mechanics of friction and pliability.

Comments

Re:Actually, they didn't learn anything new.

[Anonymous Coward]

The researches just couldn't be arsed to look up The Ashley Book of Knots.
I used to teach Abseiling, and we had to know the strengths and attributes of various knots.

Scientific knowledge proceeds from the particular to the general. Empirical data is important, but having a general theoy with predictive power even moreso. So no, what these researchers are doing is definitely a novelty. The work goes way beyond just cataloging the different kinds of knots (and their mechanical properties).