Another string theory

Now that he has solved why strings knot, perhaps scientist Robert Matthews can turn his attention to the other great household conundrum of our time: vanishing socks

A tangle of cords on an MP3 player (AFP PHOTO BENOIT DOPPAGNE)

Even in the age of wireless headphones and bluetooth hands-free headsets, few can escape the curse, the bane, the torture of tangled headphone cables. Who has not stuck a hand into a pocket or a purse only to find that the cables that were pristine and untwisted mere moments ago, have been knotted into such contortions that the German mathematician August Mobius himself would be confused?

Fortunately, help is at hand, as The National’s scientific guru Robert Matthews explained: clip the two free ends of the string – the earpiece buds, for instance, or the free ends of the rope – together, so that they form a loop. Now, the chances of the string becoming tangled are reduced.

And yet there remain conundrums: what, for example, occurs if there are multiple strings? As every parent with young, electronically-addicted children will know, stow multiple console controllers in a storage box and the entanglement increases exponentially.

If only our Mr Matthews could find an answer to that other question: why, exactly, does one half of a pair of socks always goes missing?