Knotted threads secure buttons to shirts. Knots in ropes attach boats to piers. You can find knots in shoestrings, ties, ribbons, and bows. But even without Boy Scouts or sailors, knots would be ...

MIT researchers develop a mathematical model to predict a knot’s stability with the help of color-changing fibers. Photo by Joseph Sandt Knots are some of the oldest and most-used technologies that ...

Q I am new to wearing ties. I know there are different kinds of tie knots (I see knotting directions for three), but I don't know if any are more right with certain clothes than with others. A You are ...

The bowline, clove hitch, and square are knots familiar to campers who might need to, say, tie down a tent with rope. But there are naturally occurring knots, too—ones that can be found on the ...

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Mathematicians have studied knots for centuries, but a new material is showing why some knots are better than others. One sunny day last summer, Mathias Kolle, a professor at the Massachusetts ...

Consider the plight of a gardener struggling with a recalcitrant tangle of garden hose. Sometimes, no amount of pulling or twisting unsnarls the coils. At other times, the tangles readily come apart, ...

One sunny day last summer, Mathias Kolle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took a couple of eminent colleagues out sailing. They talked about their research. They had some ...

Color-changing fibers are helping scientists to understand, for the first time, the exact ways some knots hold tighter than others. In 2018, researchers developed pressure-sensitive fibers in part to ...