Programmer Humor

The physics of knitting is so complicated that SciShow fucked it up and had a bunch of people mad at them.

Textiles are complicated crazy wonderful things. The drape of a fabric is going to be related to the materials it’s made of (cotton, linen, wool, acrylics and polyesters, blends of all of the above and more to various percentages…) as well as just the process of making.

Woven is very sturdy and doesn’t stretch. You can’t unwind the whole thing by getting it caught on something. Your jeans and slacks are probably made of woven material, because otherwise you’d accidentally lose your pants to the bump of a nail in a chair or something.

Knit stretches, but accidentally bump into a door hinge and you’ve unraveled a good chunk of your sweater. It’s good at moving though. Most things are done on knitting machines in “stockinette” stitches - look for little ‘v’ shapes.

Gotta keep in mind that the upkeep of clothing was something people use to be spend several hours a week on - beyond just laundry. Weaving takes forever and it’s not particularly exciting. Just imagine how many outfits you’d have in 1600 BC or 1600 AD versus now.

It’s just really crazy that we are all surrounded by billions of tiny fibers that were twisted into single strands that then become fabrics that then become clothes. Each stage presents uniquely complex and beautiful physics problems.

Generally simulated fabrics look good as long as it is flapping in the wind like a flag and has no chance of interacting with any other objects, such as the person wearing a scarf.

The last two-minute-papers video on the subject makes it look like a solved problem, until you notice the stats in the corner are measuring "minutes per frame"