It happens every time: You reach into your bag to pull out your headphones. But no matter how neatly you wrapped them up beforehand, the cords have become a giant Gordian knot of frustration. 有件事似乎无所不在:你把手伸到包包里拿出你的耳机,但是无论之前你把耳机缠得如何整齐,耳机线总是会结成一个十分混乱的结。 Along with your Netflix stream inexplicably buffering and Facebook emotionally manipulating you, tangled cords are the bane of modern existence. But until we invent a good way of wirelessly beaming power through the air to our beloved electronic devices, it seems like we’re stuck with this problem. 除了Netflix的让人莫名其妙的流媒体加载技术和Facebook对用户的情绪控制实验之外,绕线耳机也应该算反现代科技的一个存在。但是除非我们能发明一种比较好的无线辐射技术用于通过空气介质来连接我们所钟爱的电子设备,否则我们只能继续忍受这个问题了。 Or maybe we can fight back with science. In recent years, physicists and mathematicians have pondered why our cords are such jerks all the time. Through experiments, they have learned there are many interesting ways to explain the science of knots. In 2007, researchers at the University of California, San Diego tumbled pieces of string inside boxes in an effort to find the ways that a cord can become tangled as it wanders around in your backpack. Their paper, “Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string,” helps explain how random motions always seem to lead to knotting and not the other way around. |