Said Harvard scientist L. Mahadevan, who studies mathematics, physics, and organismic and evolutionary biology, quoted in "Scientists Unravel Mysteries Of Brushing Tangled Hair --- Researchers at Harvard, MIT use math, lab work to develop pain-free techniques" (Wall Street Journal).
The knotty hair puzzle reached Prof. Mahadevan's lab three years ago, as he was thinking about how birds build nests. His research led to the question of tangles, which also occur at the microscopic level in DNA helixes and in magnetic flux lines crisscrossing the cosmos....
"The unlinking of the homochiral helixes during this process can be quantified in terms of the Calugareanu-Fuller-White (CFW) theorem which states that Lk=Tw+Wr, where Link (Lk) quantifies the oriented crossing number of the filaments averaged over all projection directions" and so on....
As you know, if you've combed tangled hair with any competence at all, it doesn't work to start at the top and comb down. You work up from the bottom. Mahadevan, despite being a genius, couldn't comb his 5-year-old daughter's hair. But it percolated in his head for 20 years, and he ultimately did some sophisticated research (as you can see) that explains why you're going to want to start from the bottom and work your way up. Most of us observe and guess and do trial and error, but there's a place in this world for the genius, even if he can't comb a little girl's hair intuitively. We're told he has also studied "why Cheerios clump in a bowl of milk."
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19 comments:
I don't know when I last combed (or brushed) my hair. It's been years. And not because I'm bald.
"even if he can't comb a little girl's hair intuitively"
Where is the evidence that women do it intuitively, instead of learning how to do it through experience? Women Supremacy is ugly.
Katie Hill knew how to comb hair.
Never a problem with a medium and tight.
Wow, this guy sure seems interesting. His Harvard website is amazing. It must be a blast to work in his Lab.
My hair is almost to my waist at this point (at first it was COVID, and then it just became too much work to figure out how to get it cut, as in what style) and has a very pronounced and aggressive wave. I can comb or brush it while it's wet, but if I do it while it's dry, I am not able to fit my head through a doorway - which is only slightly an exaggeration.
Anyway. I take a hybrid approach: I start combing from the top of my head down, one section at a time, to the point where I begin to feel a little resistance. Then, I comb that section from the bottom back up to the point of resistance. Since my hair tangles very aggressively at its ends, but up at the scalp tends to be tangle free for a good five or six inches, I figure - math aside, and rightly or wrongly - that I am perhaps moving an incipient tangle down the strands a bit (that's when I start to feel the resistance) and therefore saving myself a second or two on each strand.
Hey, it works for me.
My daughter exhibits fine hair like her mother with curls from my side of the family. Really tight curls, that form helices from her scalp to as long as she lets the hair grow. She needs to read this analysis.
Cheerios, of course, exhibit aggregation due to differential surface tension, milk versus cereal, and the effects of cereal dissolution on particle stickiness. This and how Guinness bubbles form and flow in a glass are classic topics of discussion among college STEM students. Both require vast amounts of practical experimentation during such talks.
He’s the little boy that always asked, why, non stop
There's a hole branch of mathematics about how ropes strings cords hoses lines tie themselves into a complex of knots. Gordian to the home hobbiest, gaffers, stagehands and mud loggers have solved these riddles.
Your tax dollars at play.
"Where is the evidence that women do it intuitively, instead of learning how to do it through experience?"
Your question makes no sense to me. Doing it intuitively involves doing it through experience. You start slowly and watch what you are doing and the effect it has, beginning with the approach that seems most likely to work and moving on to another idea if the first way fails. That's what I mean by doing it intuitively. That's what I mean by "observe and guess" and "trial and error." How could you get this wrong? You sound sexist, so please dig yourself out of that hole.
I have very coarse, wavy hair. The only time I can comb it is right after I shower. Then I add copious amounts of leave in conditioner and hair gel. Once it is dry I can only comb with my fingers, otherwise it just gets bigger & bigger. Like Jamie said above, after that, I can barely walk through a door.
Or you can just use conditioner. I did without it for years, only to come use it again and find out that it really does work. If I'd know it was a topic of scientific interest, I would have applied for a research grant.
I never had to think about tangled hair, given my always thin and usually short hair. Eventually, I had three daughters with often long and always very lush hair. I learned quickly to start at the bottom and work upwards--I don't it was trial and error though. I recall it as being intuitively obvious.
A similar but less complex situation is pulling on socks or stockings. The friction quickly becomes overwhelming hence the need to bunch it up and start at the "bottom".
A similar but less complex situation is pulling on socks or stockings. The friction quickly becomes overwhelming, hence the need to bunch them up and start at the "bottom".
"You sound sexist, so please dig yourself out of that hole."
When all you have is a hammer...
I could be gay for this man.
Brush it while wet. Geniuses my foot.
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