Today's Nature has an interesting article - a survey is available from http://www.nature.com/nsu/021202/021202-4.html Paper itself: -- Mathematics: What is the best way to lace your shoes? BURKARD POLSTER School of Mathematical Sciences, PO Box 28M, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia e-mail: burkard.polster@sci.monash.edu.au The two most popular ways to lace shoes have historically been to use 'criss-cross' or 'straight' lacing but are these the most efficient? Here we demonstrate mathematically that the shortest lacing is neither of these, but instead is a rarely used and unexpected type of lacing known as 'bowtie' lacing. However, the traditional favourite lacings are still the strongest. -- Helger
On Thursday, December 5, 2002, at 04:33 AM, Helger Lipmaa wrote:
Today's Nature has an interesting article - a survey is available from http://www.nature.com/nsu/021202/021202-4.html
Somewhat off-topic, but: are you all aware of http://news.google.com It's google's completely computer-generated news delivery service -- continuously scans the web, updates that page every few minutes, and all in all, it does a phenominally good job of telling you what's going on, grouping stories on a common theme, creating headlines and categories, etc. I mention this now becuase I read about the shoe lacing article last night at around 9pm, when it was one of the news.google.com lead stories. --Michael Kleber kleber@brandeis.edu
participants (2)
-
Helger Lipmaa -
Michael Kleber