by Bill Nye
Wrap one lace over the other, then the second lace over the first one. You may have heard the expression “right over left, left over right.” Look at that knot. It’s beautiful, symmetrical; it’s the marriage of two curves. This square, or reef, knot is square; I mean that it’s symmetrical. It’s the basis for the knot we call a “bow.” Now, untie the second of the two wraps. You might go, “right over right, right over right” again. Please examine this knot. I hope you notice it’s not as good-looking as the reef knot described above.
If you’re like me, you might at this point exclaim, “Oh, the asymmetry!” This lack of balance found in about half of all conventional shoelace knots is heartbreaking. What we want in a square, or reef, knot is symmetry. Here, mathematical beauty is a means to an end. It’s more than beauty for beauty’s sake, although that ain’t bad. It’s a matter of function: A shoe tied with a reef knot will stay tied long after other, sloppier knots have come unraveled. In shoelaces, as in so much of physics, symmetry is the key to balance and stability.
When you tie a conventional bow on your shoe, check to see if its two loops, or “bunny ears,” lie perpendicular across your foot, left to right, or lengthwise along your foot, toe to heel. If the loops (or ears) come to rest in a neat left-to-right position (“athwart,” as we say at sea), that’s the way we want it. That’s symmetrical, and that arrangement will seldom come untied. This is what I call a “square bow.” If you gently pull the loops so that the loose ends of the laces pop free, the knot that is left there underneath is the beautiful square knot. Even if you perceive your laces to be woven from slippery stuff, the square-bow knot will hold its own once it is gently but snuggly tightened. Or as the saying goes, any knot has to be properly “dressed.” (For you crossword puzzlers out there, the loop of the lace is called a “bight.” It’s pronounced just like our word “bite,” and it works wonderfully in Scrabble.) The unsymmetrical knot, on the other hand, will slip with each step. It will start to lose its shape, its integrity, and its stability the moment you start walking and put stress on it. Oh, the trauma; oh, the suffering.
As you may have inferred, I tie my bows by forming a single bight and wrapping the other end of the lace around the base of the bight. If you are among those who tie laces by finishing the knot with two loops, or bunny ears, it all works the same way. The bunny ears are your knot-ty-er bights. Allow me to reassure you bunny-ear, double-bight people: You can create a square bow just fine. If you tie the base overhand knot, then form your two bunny-ear bights, and tie them in the opposite direction from your base overhand knot, you will produce a lovely square bow.
Now, I loved my grandmothers. They were both remarkable people. They raised my parents, after all, and I believe anyone who met either of them would say, “That girl has plenty of common sense.” Nevertheless, the asymmetrical, not-quite-a-proper reef knot is, by long tradition, called a “granny knot.” Sorry, Nana. Sorry, Mini. We seek a square bow rather than a “granny bow.” If you have suffered lo the many years of your life with asymmetrical granny bows, you’ll find it’s a hard habit to break. But it can be done. Try this: Reverse the first wrap of your laces. Instead of going right over left, reverse that and go left over right. Then let your muscle memory take over for finishing the bow, either by wrapping individual laces or by wrapping bunny-ear loops.
All this talk of shoe laces may seem like an unimportant detail of everyday life, but it is always underfoot—or literally atop foot. A shoelace knot is also a metaphor for the scientific approach to problem-solving. Too many people learned to tie bow knots in their shoes and accepted that imperfect, unsymmetrical, time-consuming route rather than dig deeper for a better long-term approach. So when I wax poetic about the beauty of a square knot, it’s not only because I like showing off my sailor skills; it’s because good design should be good all the way down to the details, even when we’re talking about something fairly straightforward like tying knots. I think we should all make a habit out of expecting the best problem-solving from ourselves, and there’s no better place to start than with design problems we encounter every day. That’s where things like shoelaces work well or . . . not. (Get it? Or knot? Uh . . . sorry.)
There is another big idea in here, masquerading as a small one. Even if you have tied your laces the other way, in granny-bow fashion, for years on end, you still have a chance to change. This ongoing potential for improvement is at the heart of the scientific way of looking at the world. In politics or religion, changing your ideas can be risky or even heretical. In science, abandoning a decades-old habit in response to new information reflects a vital quality of open-mindedness. Such open-mindedness is essential for making a fundamental discovery . . . or for keeping your shoes tied.
Now on to the more personal side of knot theory, the one that is so close to my heart—just a little up and to the right, to be precise. I’m talking, of course, at last, about the bow tie. It is a symmetrical bow exactly, and I mean exactly, like the knots on your shoes. There are loops and tips, or bights and ends. And whether you’re working aboard a ship, tying your shoes, or getting ready for a formal event, the loose ends are called “live ends.” By the way, the small plastic or metal tips of shoelaces are called “aglets.” It’s another word for your Scrabble collection. And by the further way, the “bitter end” of a rope or line is the inboard end, which is often attached to a “bitt,” a long wooden peg. (Trivia nourishes a nerd mind.) A bow tie follows the same mathematical rules and the same principles of symmetry that I have described for other kinds of knots. You have to form a bow around your neck, work the live ends, dress the bights, and snug it tight, and then it will look good. I mean, great.
As Jerry Seinfeld told me and a few other comics over brunch one Sunday, back when he was touring cities on his way up to the big time, “You want to dress better than your audience.” Like proper table manners, paying some extra attention to your choices in cutlery or clothing shows respect for the people around you. That’s another important tool for changing the world, and it’s a beneficial way to go through life in general. I have found that when I dress up, I stand a little straighter. I project a version of myself that has the confidence and polish I feel on my best days, which allows me to have more best days. I feel more respect for myself, not least for knowing that I am carrying around with me a tidy showcase of applied mathematics: a skill that is as useful and essential as securing those shoes on your feet.
There’s an old family holiday photo that shows my 4-year-old self sporting a very narrow and stylish bow tie, but my serious focus on the bow tie did not really get under way until I was a junior in high school. At the annual Girl’s Athletic Banquet, the boys from the school served as the waiters. I figured further that if we were going to be waiters, we should make a good first impression by dressing like professional waiters. It occurred to me that if we were presenting the girls with their meals—especially their desserts—it was almost certain that some of them would have to talk to us, if only by accident, and if only for a few seconds. I figured it could be the start of something with a certain young woman.
My father, who was thoroughly skilled with knots, taught me how to tie a bow tie by demonstrating with the tie wrapped around my leg. It’s easier than tying it around your neck, he explained, at least for your first few tries—or ties. Thighs and necks (of humans) are about the same distance around, so a leg-circling bow tie will come out very close to the right length. By practicing this way over and over while an episode of the Perry Mason television show played in the background, I acquired not only the ability to tie my tie but also an intuitive understanding of the mechanics and relationship of the loops (bights) and the live ends. By the time I made it through a week of shows, I could effortlessly knot up bow ties on others’ necks, as well. So in the boys’ room of my high school, I made the rounds and tied everybody’s ties as we prepped for the Girl’s Athletic Banquet. Then we served up some excellent school-style repasts for the ladies. And it worked—sort
of. The girl of my dreams really did speak with me but, well, it wasn’t a deal-closer. But I learned a lesson that was more important (in the long run) than closing some sort of adolescent deal: building my confidence. With a bow tie round your neck, you make a respectful first impression. That part stuck with me.
During this experience, I discovered another important functional advantage of a bow tie: It does not hang down over the buttons of your shirt the way a straight (or long) tie does. This feature prevents the tie from slipping into your soup when dining, or finding its way onto a server’s tray while serving, or flopping into your flask while you are swirling surfactants or solvents. A bow tie wraps up fashion and function in one tidy package. It’s all good, is all I’m saying.
Nevertheless, I switched back to more conventional neckwear for a while. As I moved up through school and on through life, I generally wore a straight tie to work or church. It’s what I felt the Man (or the Woman) expected me to wear. But in the 1980s, shortly after I started giving stand-up comedy a try, I experimented with bow ties as a way to set myself apart from the dozens of other would-be stand-up comics and as a way to keep from having my tie get in the way of the physical aspects of my comedy. I would flail my arms and produce balloons, or the occasional wrench strapped to my leg. I was, I admit, not especially funny. Now and then I would get laughs. But the reaction to my gags aside, I became more and more comfortable performing in a bow tie. It became part of the act, part of what I looked like on stage. A feature of stand-up comedy generally is that it has to be honest. The character one presents has to be self-consistent; it’s hard to laugh when the performer is not authentic. There’s an old saying in the theater: “You can pretend to be serious, but you can’t pretend to be funny.” I obviously had an edge there because I started out not just funny but funny-looking, as well.
After work, I would come home, take a nap, remove my straight “this one’s for the Man” tie, then head out to one or another comedy club. Wait—I would take off my tie before I took a nap . . . Upon awakening, I’d put on a bow tie and head out. During all this, whether it was a straight tie or a bow tie, I also wore a shirt. I was just working with our society’s “rules.” On the very first Science Guy segment that I did on television, in January 1987, I wore a straight tie there, too. I was on TV, trying to fit in once more. As the weeks went on that spring and I produced and performed more Science Guy bits, though, I found that a bow tie is just more practical. No slipping or flopping in soup or solvents. No blending in with the crowd.
Oh, there was a little more backsliding. I experimented with straight ties again around 2004 and 2005, when I was doing another show called The Eyes of Nye. It gave the viewer a new perspective on science-related issues, specifically ones that do not have a straightforward answer. Can we create new antibiotics that won’t produce resistant pathogens? Can nuclear waste be safely stored? Why does any organism bother with sex, etc.? Since I was striking out in a new direction, the producers and I tried me in a straight tie. It was okay, but just okay, because at this point I had been wearing bow ties for years on my show as the Science Guy. And, by the way, I feel that a big part of the success of The Science Guy show was and is that I was pretty much myself on there. With Bill, “what you see is what you get,” our editor Felicity used to say. I think she meant it as a compliment.
I had come to prefer the bow for its practicality and distinctiveness, but there’s still more to it. The bow tie also comes with a rich history as an artistic type of knot—another dose of delightful nerd trivia. The tradition of wearing a tie caught on among 17th-century Croatian mercenaries during warfare. Combatants would don a scarf so they could tell what team they were on while working to maim, decapitate, or otherwise kill their enemies (the other team). But soldiers are not always in combat; hence scarves found their way into the military dress uniform of the time, as well. During the 18th century, French aristocrats caught on to the trend, and the Croatian scarf evolved into the cravat (worn by Croats), made of fancy cloth and knotted according to rules unfamiliar to regular middle- and lower-class folk. The cravat, in turn, evolved into the bow tie, and here we are. One thing I especially like about this story is the way that tie-wearing transformed from a preparation for war into a peaceful expression of respect for your allies and peers. Yet another step in making a better world with knots!
At any rate, bow ties are my signature now. It would be difficult to turn back. When I go to college campuses these days, bow ties have become a theme. A lot of the students who show up wear bow ties of some kind. It warms my heart. Like the pocket protector or the slide rule, the bow tie has evolved into a nerd badge of honor. It displays both a mixture of deep respect for tradition and an easy comfort with standing apart from the crowd. Being open-minded and a team player are generally regarded as good attributes of a well-rounded productive employee or boss. Bow tie knots may help you think in new productive ways. They also show a willingness to stand apart and prioritize function and design in your everyday life—guiding aspects of the nerd lifestyle. Am I overdoing the bow tie bit? Is such a thing even possible? Clearly knot (not . . . uh, sorry again).
A well-tied knot, and especially a well-tied bow tie knot, signifies an appreciation for timeless symmetry over the ever-shifting whimsies of commercial style. I’m encouraged, then, that bow ties have lately become downright fashionable again. I like to think that my persistent resistance to the latest trends, and that of my like-minded nerds, helped nudge the bow tie back. With the return of the bow tie has come renewed demand for the practical knot theory that allows it to look so crisp and proper. The nerds have a leg up here, so to speak. According to accounts from various cocktail-style events—I hear things, people—many folks today don’t know how to tie a bow tie, and they feel self-conscious about wearing one. When I’m at a grown-up event with a bunch of adults in attendance, it can happen that I’m the only guy there wearing a proper bow tie.
It could happen to you, too. My feeling is: C’mon people—take a chance. Although one cannot unbutton one’s collar as easily as one can while wearing a straight tie, the bow tie has a certain knotty appeal that is difficult to achieve with a straight tie. Try it. Tie it. I dare ya.
HERE’S A LITTLE DESIGN GIFT FOR YOU, DEAR READER: a guide to several of the most useful knots for when you’re bringing home a mattress or holiday tree atop your car, securing a boat to the dock, getting your dog leashed reliably while you order a cup of coffee, or just being confident with a string in your hand. If you don’t know these knots already, I hope you will challenge yourself and try them out. Even if you have no car, no boat, no dog, or no shoes, it’s good to develop new skills every once in a while. It’s a simple matter of knowledge as power. Every knot is also its own little lesson in symmetry and the distribution of forces—a microcosm of mathematical elegance. I think everyone should know how to tie the following:
SQUARE KNOT
SQUARE BOW
TWO HALF-HITCHES
BOWLINE
CLOVE HITCH
RIGGER’S HITCH
(TRUCKER’S HITCH)
With those half-dozen knots, you can tie most things to most other things. Most people will find they can get by nicely with that set and no others. Once you come to appreciate the beauty of a well-constructed knot, though, you may discover that the knowledge is addictive (in the good way). Like mathematical equations, knots come in almost endless variations that may look superficially similar but have wildly different properties. Some are nearly impossible to untie, others look strong but easily slip apart, still others will easily but nearly unbreakably join two separate pieces of cord. If you are like me, you’ll want to keep going and get to know some of the other famous knots.
SHEEPSHANK
MAN-O-WAR SHEEPSHANK
DOUBLE BOWLINE
BOWLINE-ON-A-BIGHT
SPANISH BOWLINE
(DOUBLE FORKED BOWLINE)
I included those last few knots especially for the hard-core nerds
among us. Most people will never learn them, but each one is important and beautiful in its own way. Each has a different origin, a different history, a different utility. The double bowline, for instance, is particularly useful in rock climbing. The Spanish bowline not only is a truly elegant work of double-looped symmetry but also turns out to be really useful for lifting a body. If you fall into a cave or crevasse, your rescuers might lower one down to you. Put your legs through the loops, hold on to the cord, and you are on your way back to safety. It’s an exquisite solution to a terrifying problem. Welcome to another corner of the everything-all-at-once world.
CHAPTER 9
Land of the Free, Home of the Nerds
As much as I try to think globally and universally, there’s no escaping my local origins. I was born in the United States, got my engineering degree and engineering license here, work here, and live here. It’s possible, then, that I’m not entirely objective about the quality and effectiveness of the American government. Be that as it may, I am amazed, humbled, and filled with reverence whenever I visit the US National Archives in Washington, DC. It is located downtown beside the National Mall, right near several far more famous landmarks—including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of American History, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the wonderful National Air and Space Museum—so the National Archives are often unjustly overlooked. I was just there and, wow, it knocked me out all over again. No election result can change the way I feel there. If you’re ever in DC, I strongly urge you to visit this place.
To me, the National Archives is nerd nirvana, not just for Americans but for anyone who wants to see what can happen when you put scientific principles to work in building an entire nation from scratch. Here you can view the letters and documents recording that process as it unfolded. The founders of this country were products of the Enlightenment, the 18th-century intellectual movement that regarded reason as the highest quality of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and company sought to create a government that was better than any that had come before, and they believed that the way to do it was to ask honest questions, examine evidence, carefully debate the pros and cons of various solutions, and engage in rational action. “Everything all at once” is not an idea that began with me, not by a long shot. It is woven into the fabric of this nation, even if people seem to forget about that a lot of the time. Revisiting that spirit can be a constant source of inspiration, no matter where you live in the world.
