Quirkathonic: Bollox, I'm never going to get this undone

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Bollox, I'm never going to get this undone

The essence of Knot Theory

Every time I get out my mp3 player, no matter how properly I've wound up the cord, I bugger it up. It unwind it, but the second I grab the other end to stick an earbud in, it's caught on something. A button, my collar, knotted on itself before I can even finish putting it back in my pocket, or just putting in an earbud. Same with the laptop cord, take it out of the bag, plug in one end, then I always, have to unravel it again. The conspiracy is true, everything I touch turns to pooh for a reason.

Yep, you got it. Some mathematician has been as frustrated as me and worked it out. The theory is self explanatory Knot Theory, sometimes also referred to as Tangle Theory which seems to go much more into dealing with dimensions. This is not to be confused with String Theory (that I think is more like Tangle Theory, I'm getting confused here where they may be some cross-over?) which deals with extra dimensions, which, frustrated Einstein no end.

Apparently there are a couple of mathematical components which together bring all this together to emerge with this complete Tangle Theory. There's a pretzel link and a pretzel knot (you got, it is really called 'pretzel', although naming a mathematical theory as an item of food sounds intriguing).

One part of the theory is extracted from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which simply put translates to the chaos thing where all order tends towards disorder. Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. So, we're told the next bit is 'complicated'.

I found this vid from Youtube really good.

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If you're keen, it carries on here in Part 2. I found it much more complicated, but having said that, I'm find dealing with dimensions really difficult to get my head around.

Not Knot (Part 2/2)

I've tried to find a couple of articles here which are for the untried mathematician or physicist, that would be me, so it's something I can comprehend.

Good luck with this, and happy reading! Below is an article from 'Bend Weekly'.