The researchers showed participants four knots that are physically similar but have a hierarchy of strength. People were asked to look at the knots, two at a time, and point to the strongest one. The ...

We tie our shoes, we put on neckties, we wrestle with power cords. Yet despite deep familiarity with knots, most people cannot tell a weak knot from a strong one by looking at them, Johns Hopkins ...

We are deeply intuitively familiar with our everyday physical world, so it was perhaps a bit of a surprise when researchers discovered a blind spot in our intuitive physical reasoning: it seems humans ...

It’s time for some more notes on knots. Some will recall that I periodically spend absurd amounts of time testing fishing knots on some lab equipment and then publish the results, usually in our print ...

This story was originally featured on Field & Stream. Fishing line has advanced remarkably in the past few decades. Nylon monofilament, fluorocarbon, and so-called “superline” give fishermen ...

Tying the strongest fishing knot isn’t only about the knot itself. The line you choose matters every bit as much, and thanks to remarkably advancements in the recent decades, you have choices when it ...

Researchers have unearthed a robust physics-based mechanism that dictates the sliding strength, or resistance to slippage, of the most common type of surgical knot. In particular, they have found that ...