Rich came up with an article and link from TED Ideas Worth Spreading. TED stands for Technology, Education, and Design. Rich found out that he’s being tying his shoelaces wrong. Sorry, he’s been doing it incorrectly. Rich can’t possibly be wrong. That’s all I heard for a couple of days, “I’ve been tying my shoes wrong for the last 46 years!”
So according to Terry Moore on the TED site, there are two forms of a knot: a weak form and strong form. From an early age, we’ve been taught to tie our shoes using the weak form of the knot. That’s why your shoes don’t stay tied! Who knew?
Some of you out there might have found out about this already and didn’t share that information with the rest of us. This means that we’ve been walking all over our shoelaces for nothing. To prevent the flapping laces, we’ve resorted to tying the laces in double knots to keep them in places. That is if we are lucky to have enough string to tie a double knot.
The one except to this appears to be my son, Rick. He tied his shoelaces the first day he got his tennis shoes and has never had to retie them. Turns out, he never unties the laces to take the shoes off or on. The knots are now glued into places by dirt, grime, and the occasional dampness from a passing rain shower.
Anyway, back to the strong form of a shoelace knot. Rich being an engineer just had test the theory behind the strong knot. The other morning, he put on his shoes for work. He tied one shoe with the strong knot and the other shoe with the double knot. Later that evening, he came in the door shouting, “It’s still tied!” Sure enough, the strong knot held up all day.
Rich also had to share this information with his co-workers. He told his boss about the experiment. Phil tried the same thing. Now they both had one shoe tied with the strong knot and one double tied. So this experiment is now known as “time tested.”
This morning, Rich tied both shoes with the strong knot. At the end of the day, they remained tied without having to adjust or retie. Once again, he shared his experiment with some of the other guys at work. One co-worker remarked that Rich was tying his laces backwards. “No,” Rich says, “I’m tying them better.” I have to admit, it does look backwards from what we know.
I love to wear my clogs, which requires so little maintenance. However, I’ve actually started tying my tennis shoes this way. They are comfortable and not binding, but not coming lose while I walk either. I’m thinking that my hiking boots could benefit from this treatment while I’m on vacation.
OK, so a picture is worth a thousand words. I didn’t write a thousand words (only 619), and now here are the pictures.
http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes.html