Why are Christmas lights so tangled?
2 min readThe arrived birthday This is the time when families decorate their homes for the arrival of Santa Claus. However, one of the biggest headaches when decorating is opening up Christmas lights🇧🇷 And if you’re used to filling your home with these subtle little lights, you know very well what we’re talking about.
No matter how you stored them last Christmas, they always tangle up. Looks like they came back to life!
This was in mind, in 2007, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 🇧🇷PNAS) in research to try to explain how this kind of situation occurs and what are the causes of this problem, even providing a scientific explanation for the fact.
Curious? Check out below the interpretation of such an unpleasant, but solvable event.
Why are the Christmas lights always tangled?
To answer this question, an experiment was conducted in which researchers put strings inside a box and shake it, as is the case with clothes inside the box. Washer🇧🇷
This procedure was repeated about 3,400 times in order to observe how the strings would behave. At first, it was possible to notice that the strings began to intertwine seconds after the box began to rotate.
During the entire experiment conducted by the researchers, it was surprising: more than 120 different types of nodes were formed.
🇧🇷It didn’t take long for us graduate – Maybe about 10 seconds. We were surprised by this,” says one of the paper’s authors, Douglas Smith.
“we immediately We started to see these nodes Complex graduation🇧🇷 It was all very fast.”
It can also be seen that the length of tendons was a determining factor for the formation of knots. The longer the thread, the greater the chance of it getting tangled.
Another important factor is the materials used, with looser ropes causing more knots than stiffer ropes.
However, the most important and decisive factor in all of these matters is whether or not the ends of the strings are loose. With loose strings, they are more likely to tangle and form more knots.
“in a Tips is really what an act a In the if to shape “says lead author of the research, Dorian Reimer.
So what should be done to avoid these knots?
A good tip to avoid these knots is to wrap the lights in a piece of cardboard before putting them away.
Also, “be sure to tape the ends of the lights to the cardboard,” Raymer warns. 🇧🇷So Form, Immobilize them and they do not escape and scramble.”
Good advice, right?
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