Mathematics Reveal Universal Properties Of Old Rope

Despite rope’s obvious geometric properties, the art of rope making has been strangely neglected by mathematicians over the centuries. Today, Jakob Bohr and Kasper Olsen at the Technical University of Denmark put that right by proving the remarkable property that ropes cannot have more than a certain number of turns per unit length, a number which depends on the diameter of the component strands.

And that’s just the start. They go on to show that a rope with a smaller number turns than this maximum will always twist in one direction or another under tension.