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?

  • Carl M

    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.

  • Carl M

    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.

  • Steve

    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.

  • Steve

    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.

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel

    Awesome post, Carl. Glad to have you back. :)

  • http://dmiessler.com Daniel

    Awesome post, Carl. Glad to have you back. :)


Top

Popular

Information Security / Technology

Politics

Philosophy & Religion

Technology & Science

Culture & Society

Miscellaneous

Arguments

Projects

Collections

Twitter

What I'm Reading

Favorite Books and Essays

Top Blog Categories

Inputs