Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The geometry of rope

NPS Image of children hauling on a line on Balclutha

Ever wonder about the physical rules behind a good rope? Intrigued by the phrase, "zero-twist point?" Then you would enjoy Alexandra Witze's article in ScienceNews, Physicists untangle the geometry of rope.

Her article gives a basic, brief overview of the mathematics behind the process of turning strands into rope, as revealed in Jakob Bohr & Kasper Olsen's article, The ancient art of laying rope.

How did the researchers come to work on rope winding? From their work on DNA, of course!

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:03 AM

    nice illustrative picture here, thanks! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very cool! It's always interesting to see how intertwined the various arts and sciences are.

    ReplyDelete

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