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Spaghetti gets knotted

June 08, 2001

A new and novel way of localising the breakage point in a rope or string is described today in New Journal of Physics, published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society. Spaghetti lubricated in olive oil is shedding light on why knotted ropes or strings used by sailors, anglers and mountaineers snap where and when they do. "Finding the breakage point on a rope with some degree of accuracy is very difficult. Materials like nylon break so fast that it is impossible to see where or why a break occurs, even with a high velocity camera. Instead the best material to see a breakage turns out to be well cooked spaghetti," said Dr Giovanni Dietler of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Mountaineers, sailors and anglers all recognise that knotted ropes break easily near to the site of the knot. By looking at why a rope or string breaks at the site of the knot, it is hoped that stronger fabrics can be produced that overcome this problem. The researchers, who are based at the University of Lausanne, and Poznan University of Technology in Poland, analysed consecutive frames of film to see where the breaking process begins. It was found that the breaking point was localised at well-defined points, close to the entrance to the knot, where the spaghetti was very bent.

The researchers then carried out computer simulations of tightening knots to see what effect this had. "It was found that the breakage occurred where the bend in the filament was the greatest," said Professor Piotr Pieranski of Poznan University in Poland. As the conclusion is that the higher the curvature in the rope, the more chance of it breaking, producing materials with new weaving patterns that reduce the curvature of composing fibres could be key to creating new strong materials. This same principle could also be applied to produce stronger plastics by minimising the curvature in polymer chains or by avoiding knots within the molecule.

"By comparing localisation of breakage points in knotted spaghetti with those reported in molecular simulations of knotted individual polyethylene chains we were struck by the conservation of the same basic physical principles from macro to nano scale" says Dr. Andrzej Stasiak from the University of Lausanne.

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