image: An image of a trefoil knot, mostly 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). Compared to the less tight trefoil knot, there is considerably more green, and even blue, indicating higher levels of strain within the knotted fiber. 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