New Shape Born From Rubber Bands 120
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Physicists playing with rubber bands have discovered a new shape. In an attempt to create a spring that replicates the light-bending properties of cuttlefish ink sacs, a team of researchers suspended two rubber strips of different lengths. Connecting the bottoms of the two strips to a cup of water, the shorter band stretched to the same length as the longer one. After gluing the two stretched strips together, the researchers gradually drained the water from the cup. As the bands retracted and twisted from the reduced strain, the researchers were shocked to see the formation of a hemihelix with multiple rainbow-shaped boundaries called perversions. The team hopes their work inspires nanodevices and molecules that twist and transform from flat strips into predetermined 3D shapes on demand."
There are several videos attached to the original paper, and all can be viewed without flash.
Old phone cords? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I used corded handsets a lot one could strech them out far enough and then when they retracted you would get a very similar shape....
The real discovery here: (Score:4, Funny)
People have started to rediscover things that were perfectly ordinary 20 years ago. If it is not mentioned anywhere on the Internet or you cannot find it because there is no word for it, then it becomes a new invention when stumbled upon.
I have just filed a patent for a sound storage device that consists of two spools. The sound is stored in direct form so that it can be sent to a sound emitting device without DAC. I call it Direct Sound(tm).
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You can't trademark Direct Sound. Microsoft already has DirectSound.
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You're in luck. It was USPTO 75480046. It's since been abandon, as the filer didn't keep up with it. Quick, grab it while you can.
Funny though, the details say it was only for audio on the Internet. :)
Re:Old phone cords? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's a new shape, dammit!
I have also invented several new shapes. One of them, I draw part of a circle, and then it turns into a squiggly line for a while, and then a quarter of a square, followed by a third of an asymptote. Another time, I drew 3 squiggly lines connected to a 4th line that was almost straight but still a little squiggly. I call it a squiggle-square.
Re:Old phone cords? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's a new shape, dammit!
I have also invented several new shapes. One of them, I draw part of a circle, and then it turns into a squiggly line for a while, and then a quarter of a square, followed by a third of an asymptote. Another time, I drew 3 squiggly lines connected to a 4th line that was almost straight but still a little squiggly. I call it a squiggle-square.
By the Gods boy, where are your patents?
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Hey, I prefer to call them Drunkles, or squnks in a pinch. Alcohol and sketch tablets make strange bedfellows.
Re:Old phone cords? (Score:5, Funny)
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It's like this one song I came up with that was just one note over and over, but every now and again you bend it a little.
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It's like this one song I came up with that was just one note over and over, but every now and again you bend it a little.
That's Bleed by Meshuggah.
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They spent a fortune on getting someone to CAD that up instead of just taking a picture of a telephone cord.
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That is exactly what I thought the moment I saw this.
Kids these days.... sheesh.
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Now re-create that technological relic with two joined flat and straight surfaces by simulating a natural growth pattern, and maybe apply what you found to study plant root formation for example. The summary is a bit over the top, but the science is sound in the experiment anyway. This deepens understanding how nature has worked out the mechanics of the helical forms.
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The "New Shape" part is the overstatement. Fortunately the absurd part is limited only to the Slashdot title; the actual paper seems pretty level headed and interesting. Sound science I agree.
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And I always had a hell of a time getting that little kink out...
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Yeah, that's exactly what i was thinking. It looks exactly like the tangles my corded desk phone gets.
Re:Old phone cords? (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the point of the paper. The paper is not there to show "new shapes" that is the reporter that clearly doesn't understand what's going on saying that.
The paper explains HOW these things happen and HOW specific shapes can be modeled (aka calculated or created on purpose) in function of various forces and aspect ratios. They for example, show how to consistently get such a 'kink' (perversion) like the one in your phone cord on every "turn".
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and I thought you were just being an asshole
until I looked at the pics.
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I'm glad this was the first response. It's the first thing I thought of too when seeing the image on FB. (From "I fing love science")
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Also rubber band airplanes. Wind them up, at one point you get exactly that shape. IDK if the math of the shape was ever explored though. Oftentimes 'discoveries' are things that we, the great unwashed, saw all the time but never noticed. And that's OK - we need people who say, "That's funny..."
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And just think of all that time people spent trying to 'un-pervert' their phone cord. Of course it seemed more annoying than perverted at the time.
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Same for curled garden hoses. This is no new shape, ROFLOL.
New? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New? (Score:5, Funny)
But it's on the Internet...
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I'm sure I used a PC keyboard with that style of cord on a portion of the cable.. Model M keyboard.
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My telephone cord at work has been like this for years.
If only any of us had thought of a catchy name for that shape, rather than cursing when we tried to use the phone, we would be on the cover of Slashdot too.
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We keep getting richer, but we can't get out picture ... ;-)
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I bought five copies for my mother.
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Re:New? (Score:5, Informative)
Kinda yes, kinda no:
So, they've come up with a term to describe this.
And, lest anybody think they were unaware of the phone cord thing:
So, they know that people have seen this. They seem to be the ones introducing the term they've applied to describe it.
A new name to an old shape, but mostly they've figured out how to predict it, and then hopefully how to plan for it to build specific shapes.
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Someone christened this the "Bell Knot" at least as early as 2006, so it's not even a new name: http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/105/The-Mysterious-Bell-Knot-Challenge [globalspec.com]
---Chip
Bell Knot (Score:2)
Well, they're no the first to TRY to name it.
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What's a telephone cord?
#LOLZ #oldthings
My phone cord has done this for decasdes (Score:2, Insightful)
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Telephone cord (Score:2, Funny)
From looking at the picture, it looks like what the telephone cord would eventually look like on the kitchen extension when I was a kid. (before everyone had cordless phones). Older people here might recall seeing mom get tangled up in the thing while gabbing away and cooking at the same time, she would eventually have to twirl around to extricate herself and hang up the phone.
Score: -1, Redundant (Score:5, Funny)
My old phone cord.... never mind.
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Mod Parent up, I'm gonna post instead.
perversions can also be introduced manually, for instance, by the simple operation of holding one end of a helical telephone cord fixed and twisting the other in a direction counter to its initial chirality
This explains why I must keep my phone on the left side of my desk to avoid tangling the handset cord. When it's on the right, I give the handset nearly a full twist to get it from the cradle to my left ear (to keep my right hand free for writing/mousing) -- and then another twist back to set it back down on the cradle. Since I'm grabbing with my right hand, the right hand twist is "counter to its initial chirality," which is left handed for most cords I've seen. (Le
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At the banks they used to tie phones down to the desks with cords so that customers wouldn't walk off with them.
Here's a YouTube Video of it (Score:3)
This will be a little easier to view. [youtube.com]
Not seeing anything groundbreaking off the top of my head...
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A rabbi walks into a bar, holding a phone cord...
Like 70's Phone Cords... (Score:1)
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Unfortunately, TFA looks slashdotted. I assume 'new shape' means a new geometry nobody has cataloged before? Maybe it never occurred to someone that it was a distinct shape? That or the phone cord analogy I'm seeing here isn't quite accurate.
No, more like dark matter [comicvine.com]. ;-)
Two strips one cup (Score:5, Funny)
No thanks.
Going for an Ignobel Prize? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't occur in nature? (Score:1)
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If your calamari turns into rubber bands, you're probably overcooking it.
WMV fail (Score:2)
Windows Media Video 9 files without any identifying suffix in the downloadable archive. Good going.
Assholes.
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A new meaning to platform agnostic. Just leave off the file extension.
Screw the phone cords... (Score:2)
And underwear elastic furthered it.
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You mean Cheez Whiz?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
The usual story: flawed summary (Score:5, Informative)
A recent, simple experiment using elastomer strips reveals that hemihelices with multiple reversals of chirality can also occur, a richness not anticipated by existing analyses. Here, we show through analysis and experiments that the transition from a helical to a hemihelical shape, as well as the number of perversions, depends on the height to width ratio of the strip's cross-section. Our findings provides the basis for the deterministic manufacture of a variety of complex three-dimensional shapes from flat strips.
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The title is basically buzzfeed for science.
"Which Perverse Hemihelical Chirality are you? Take this quiz to find out!"
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They were "shocked" because the submitter thought it sounded jazzier than "stunned". "Amazed" would have done the same job, but it's a bit old hat.
To be honest, we really need a new word to convey over-hyped excitement and surprise in news-speak. Something like "incredulated".
This shape (Score:3)
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It does seem very similar to the shape a badly twisted slinky can make.
Not a new shape, a new method (Score:3)
I did that before (Score:2)
I swear I remember doing this exact thing when I was a kid.
Sounds like ... (Score:2)
Hemihelix Perversion. That sounds so ... dirty.
My mind is a raging torrent of possible meanings. But I will spare you all.
Cook any bacon lately? (Score:2)
Balsa Airplanes (Score:3)
That Grant Money (Score:2)
They're gonna give it back .. when?