image: An image of a figure-eight knot, partially tightened, in a mechanochromic fiber. Regions of high strain (green, yellow) can be easily distinguished from sections of the knot at low strain (red, orange). This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Jan. 3, 2019 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by V.P. Patil at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues was titled, "Topological mechanics of knots and tangles." view more
Credit: Joseph Sandt