We've all been there: you are in a hurry to get to a bus, to get jogging or to get working. You grab some earphones so music, or maybe a podcast, can help occupy your mind. But instead of finding the two buds easy to grab and stuff in your ears, you find a bundle of knotted wire.
You frantically try to straighten it all out so you can start the music and get started with your activity. You become a knot of frustration.
Well, someone has figured out how to lessen the likelihood of getting that tangled mess. Robert Matthews is a physicist at the Department of Engineering and Applied Science at Aston University, in Birmingham, England. He had a hypothesis that if the ends were joined in a loop, the tendency to entangle itself would decrease. So Matthews enlisted the help of school kids to test this "Loop Conjecture."
"The Great British Knot Experiment" was a success. One school in Coventry, England performed 12,000 such knotting tests with string ranging in size from 21.6 inches to 72 inches. All of this knotting proved that his "Loop Conjecture" worked.
The "Loop Conjecture" states that the two earbuds must by joined together by the little plastic clip on most earphones. The two earbuds should then be attached to the headphone jack end, creating a loop of wire that is less likely to become a tangle.
"By forming the loop you've effectively reduced the length of string able to explore the 3D space by 50 percent, which makes a big difference," Matthews said to ABC News. "You've also eliminated the two ends, which are the prime movers of knot formation."
Matthews had a hypothesis much like Murphy's law, that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. He called this "Murphy's Law of String" -- if string can get into knots, it will. His mathematical work and practical tests showed that string tended to become tangled. Furthermore, the longer the string, the greater the tendency increased.
"This was all about using hard science to tackle an everyday issue," said Matthews.
His "Loop Conjecture" may have greater applications beyond using earphones for music. Matthews believes this may assist in examining why thread-like DNA can get tangled and that nature may form loops in DNA to prevent such knotting.
Photo: Robert S. Donovan
