Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have made a surprising discovery about human physical reasoning – our ability to assess knot strength is severely limited. Despite being familiar with knots from everyday experiences, such as tying shoelaces or unraveling cords, most people cannot accurately identify the strongest or weakest knot by looking at it.
A study published in the journal Open Mind found that participants failed to distinguish between physically similar knots, even when shown videos of each knot spinning slowly. The researchers also attempted to provide a clearer understanding of the knots’ structure, but participants still struggled.
The experiment’s lead author, Sholei Croom, suspects that our brains may be more adept at reasoning about solid objects than flexible ones, like string. However, this does not seem to apply to knot assessment. “We tried to give people the best chance in the experiment, including showing them videos of the knots rotating, but it didn’t help,” Croom said.
The study highlights a new blind spot in human physical reasoning and raises questions about our ability to extract meaningful information from visual cues. As Croom noted, this discovery sheds light on “many open questions still remain in our ability to reason about the environment.”
Source: https://phys.org/news/2024-12-strength-people-loop-reveals-physical.html