Elastic knots are really mind bending

When you make a mathematical knot using elastic material you get jumping loops and challenging puzzles.

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[SteveMould]

I forgot to say, the puzzle knot by Langer is 9_46 (9 underscore 46).

[Joulespersecond]

"But it's not stable, and if I let it go it ends up touching itself again"
feeling personally attacked by this

[Bagpipebrad]

9:15 "... but it's knot."

[clnrrr]

I was always fascinated by these when trying to pack my "2 seconds" tent at the end of a festival. Turns out, the time you save when it "assembles itself", you really invest at the end, learning how it will go back in its bag

[UncleKennysPlace]

Reminds me of how I unwrap new bandsaw blades, which come in overlapping loops: I remove the ties, and toss is across the shop.

[Mike__B]

The beginning of the video I start feeling the cold sweats, and I'm instantly reminded of those window shades for cars or those quick pop up tents/sunshades that I can never figure out how to rebend to fit in the same size area.

[yawnberg]

Lord Kelvin's attempts to make mechanical models of elementary particles is one of the coolest failures in history. Also kinda tragic because he was so convinced that he could apply his engineering genius to the atomic scale that, late in life, he got a bit obsessed with trying to model the aether and refused to accept other theories. Shouldn't overshadow his many MANY other accomplishments though. Biographies of Thompson are always a good read, much recommend.

[fragglet]

Polite request that it would be good if you could put things a bit higher up in the frame so that they don't get covered by the subtitles ❤

[nevinofstedal]

That was the smoothest transition to a sponsor I've ever seen. 10/10

[freescape]

3:18
I found the non-self-touching relaxed knot you mentioned not existing! I call it - the Un-knot! And there's actually an alphanumeric character for it: "°"

[williamsharkey]

Casual exposition style belies mastery of conveying so many beautiful concepts with ease. Thanks for putting in the effort Steve!

[bilboswaggings]

Help my Marvin the Martian is self touching

[parmsib]

Heads up: There's a typo in the title. "is" should be "in"

[KarstenJohansson]

I have a fishing hat with mosquito net that uses one of these configurations. When not worn, it packs flat in an envelope. When you pull it out, it springs to life as a full-size hat.

[AndrewYarmola]

The tetrahedral symmetry is not too surprising if you know that the complement of the figure-8 knot is the gluing of two truncated tetrahedra. The edge colorings also match.

[reiserlein]

Popup tents are working like that puzzle. Love it❤

[kinexkid]

That windows pipe screensaver just gave me a flashback. About 15 years ago i had a really nasty case of the flu, and had a fever of a little over 104 degrees and i woke up in the middle of the night. I was so out of it, that i was hallucinating that those giant blobs of pipes were coming out of my mouth and floating arou d the room while shape-shifting into different configurations

[scottmasson]

Try opening a bandsaw blade when it comes coiled.

[alexposada]

I used to have a small folding tent that had a frame that was the exact same as the puzzle!

[MMTMacroTrader]

Looks like Marvin the Martian you say?