- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Re: There is much we do not understand -- power cords in the briefcase, for example: You set them in neatly and a few hours later they are completely entangled with each other, and who knows why? --
The subject of the entanglement theory of spaghetti, long hair, power cords, and polymers was initially developed by the very entertaining but unfortunately recently deceased Nobelist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. One of the things he explained is just the length where hair went from comb-able to a tangled knot. See The Knot Book: An Elementary Introduction To The Mathematical Theory Of Knots by Colin Conrad Adams (I haven't read it but every other reference I found was too mathematical.)
