Original version

BBC World Service South Asia

CrowdScience

Documentaries

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Answering your questions about life, Earth and the universe

We take your questions about life, Earth and the universe to researchers hunting for answers at the frontiers of knowledge.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

CrowdScience: Why do my cables keep getting tangled?

Discussion & Talk

GettyImages-525874844_crop.jpg

16/07/2021 GMT

Why do my cables keep getting tangled?

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Why do my cables keep getting tangled?

Can science explain why cables and headphones become tangled up and knotted?

We investigate the knotty problem of jumbled cables and discover how understanding physics might help us prevent them from tangling up.

Anyone who has ever taken the Christmas lights out of the cupboard, only to discover they’re hopelessly tangled, will sympathise with this week’s listener Eric. He has a 45m garden hose that always seems to snarl up and snag when he waters his garden, and he wonders what he’s doing wrong? 

Marnie starts by discovering the important difference between tangles and knots, as she scales a cliff with an experienced climber who explains the way you tie rope is a matter of life and death. 

Physicists are also fascinated in how string becomes jumbled up and one man has even won an IgNobel award for his work in this field. Doug E Smith discovered that if you put a piece of string in a box then spin it around, its length, thickness and how long you shake the box for, all determine whether it will tie itself up. Not only that, the more the string becomes twisted, the more likely it is to cross over itself and become impossible to untangle.

While tangles might be annoying in hair or cables, they’re also a fundamental part of human life. Our DNA is constantly folding itself to fit inside tiny spaces – there are two metres of the stuff inside every cell, where it’s packed down tightly, before it must untangle and duplicate for those cells to divide. It does this with the help of specific enzymes, and when the process goes wrong it leads to cell death. But scientists are also studying molecular tangles that might benefit us humans, and creating nano-sized knots that can be turned into nets or meshes with incredible properties. 
Producer: Ilan Goodman
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Accessibility links

Programme Index

CrowdScience

Why do my cables keep getting tangled?

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service South Asia

About BBC World Service