Ever wondered why it happens so often? Turns out it’s not just down to your shoe-tying skills.
If you’re anything like us then you fall down… a lot!
We always thought our clumsiness and lack of shoe-tieing abilities were the reason behind our fails but now we have a fall (ha) guy and guess what?…
IT’S SCIENCE.
Yes folks, there is a scientific reason why your shoelaces come undone and we’re delighted.
Mechanical Engineers at UC Berkeley filmed their colleague running in slow motion to decipher the reason why laces come undone.
We’ve also discovered that it’s oddly satisfying to watch people run in slow motion, take a look below.
Turns out the force of inertia whipping the laces forward and the stomping of the foot all contribute to the loosening of the knot.
And before you get all smart with us we KNOW what inertia means, it’s the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (we swear we didn’t google).
So why is this important for scientists to know and not just for us eejits who fall down all the time? Speaking to Cnet.com one of the authors of the study Christopher Daily Diamond said,
“Once you understand the shoelace you can apply it to other things like DNA or microstructures that fail under dynamic forces”.
Well… that told us.
