Why your shoelaces come untied
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Unrecognizable young runner tying her shoelaces. Studio shot on wooden floor background. (iStock)
Experts at a top university have solved one of the great scientific problems — why your shoelaces come undone.
They found repeated impact of the shoe on the floor serves to loosen the knot.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Leg swing as we walk makes the end of the laces go into a whipping motion, causing them to slip.
And this combination eventually leads to the whole thing unraveling.
The feeling of footwear suddenly becoming loose has frustrated humans for thousands of years.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Researchers were actually probing how knotted structures fall part.
They studied slow motion footage of a runner on a treadmill.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It showed that when the knot in her trainers failed the laces came undone in as few as two strides.
Mechanical engineer Christopher Daily-Diamond, of the University of California — Berkeley, said: “This is the first step toward understanding why certain knots are better than others.”
The study said there are two ways to tie the common shoelace bow knot.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}One holds for longer than the other, though it is not known why, but both fail the same way.
Professor Oliver O’Reilly, whose lab conducted the research, said: “We still don’t understand why there is a fundamental mechanical difference between those knots.”
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Researchers found tightly-tied laces need more cycles of impact and leg swinging to fail than normal in a day.
This is why laces don’t always come undone.