Talk:Overhand knot

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"Spontaneous composition method"? This should go to Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense - I've never seen 3 or 4 knots spontaneously appear in anything.

3 or 4 may be hyperbole, but try it sometime. I altered the entry a little. It really was known as "the knot that ties itself". Ortolan88

It happened to me just yesterday. One way 3 or 4 knots can tie themselves "spontaneously" is to start with a coiled rope (outdoor extension cord in this case). If you are careless, one coil can pass through another as you uncoil the rope (particularly if you start to uncoil it and then drop the coil), and before you know it, you have created a series of overhand knots in the bight without having touched either end of the rope. Even thick water hoses will pull this trick. Ortolan88

It should probably be mentioned that this is called a Single_hitch when tied around an object. That page already points this out. --NormalAsylum 02:51, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Oganization of overhand-based knot articles

Bringing part of a discussion that started in Talk:One-sided overhand bend here.

There are several distinct knots based directly on the basic overhand knot. It would be good to have an overall plan for how to organize these knots for the best presentation to the reader. First we should probably come up with a list of exactly which knots might fit into the "family" we're talking about. Here's some that occur to me:

[edit] Directly related to overhand

And as an aside, Loop (knot) should be moved to Loop (knot component)?
  • Noose, should probably should be moved to Overhand noose?
Noose article can be repurposed for discussing the class of constricting loop knots

[edit] Indirectly but closely related

The indirectly related list could obviously get pretty huge. For our purposes here, fleshing out the directly related list is probably most useful... --Dfred 13:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Added Trefoil knot. Although it is used in knot theory, it's probably good to have a link between practical and theortical articles for such a fundamental knot in both fields. --Dfred 16:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly Linking Related Knots in Large Families

In larger families of knots like the Overhand knot (and possibly other large families like the Figure-of-eight family) do you think there should be something like the navbox below for knots directly related to the Overhand knot? WikipedianYknOK 16:14, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

v • d • e
Knots Based on the Overhand knot
Bends Overhand  · Water
Binding Strangle
Hitches Overhand  · Marlinespike  · Single
Loops Overhand
Stoppers Overhand  · Double Overhand


That's a very interesting idea. It has occurred to me while adding knots to the catch-all "related" field of the current infobox that there are several distinct ways knots can be related:
  • Structurally - More or less what we're talking about above
  • By class or category - more or less mapping to the Catetory: system we adopt
  • Functionally - less rigid sub- (or perhaps super-) categories and classes. Probably don't rise to the level of actual :Category:, but useful for users to compare knots with similar properties and/or used for similar purposes. Examples of these might be:
  • hitches which resist lengthwise pull
  • hitches which resist right-angle pull
  • knots which can be used as makeshift hackamores
  • binding knots secure enough to serve as makeshift whippings
  • etc.
One general comment, though... I've seen these navboxes used in other projects and while they can be useful, sometimes they have so much stuff in them that the important items are not immediately clear. They do have the advantage of presenting a lot of information and using page space efficiently. --Dfred 16:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)