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Knot board [] on Elbe 1 (ship, 1965). A knot is an intentional complication in cordage [1] which may be practical or decorative, or both. Practical knots are classified by function, including hitches, bends, loop knots, and splices: a hitch fastens a rope to another object; a bend fastens two ends of a rope to each another; a loop knot is any knot creating a loop; and splice denotes any multi ...
Pretzel link knot – in knot theory, a branch of mathematics, a pretzel link is a special kind of link; Prusik knot – friction hitch or knot used to put a loop of cord around a rope; Portuguese bowline a.k.a. French bowline – variant of the bowline with two loops that are adjustable in size; Portuguese whipping – a type of whipping knot
The bowline knot is thought to have been first mentioned in John Smith's 1627 work A Sea Grammar under the name Boling knot. Smith considered the knot to be strong and secure, saying, "The Boling knot is also so firmly made and fastened by the bridles into the cringles of the sails, they will break, or the sail split before it will slip."
Although the unit knot does not fit within the SI system, its retention for nautical and aviation use is important because the length of a nautical mile, upon which the knot is based, is closely related to the longitude/latitude geographic coordinate system. As a result, nautical miles and knots are convenient units to use when navigating an ...
Important results followed, including the Gordon–Luecke theorem, which showed that knots were determined (up to mirror-reflection) by their complements, and the Smith conjecture. Interest in knot theory from the general mathematical community grew significantly after Vaughan Jones' discovery of the Jones polynomial in 1984.
[1]: 18, 224 It is considered one of the most important knots, alongside the bowline and the sheet bend. Although the name clove hitch is given by Falconer in his Dictionary of 1769, the knot is much older, having been tied in ratlines at least as early as the first quarter of the sixteenth century. This is shown in early sculpture and paintings.
The reef knot can capsize if one of its standing ends is pulled.. A knot that has capsized or spilled has deformed into a different structure. Although capsizing is sometimes the result of incorrect tying or misuse, it can also be done purposefully in certain cases to strengthen the knot (see the carrick bend [4]) or to untie a seized knot which would otherwise be difficult to release (see ...
In practice, knots are often distinguished using a knot invariant, a "quantity" which is the same when computed from different descriptions of a knot. Important invariants include knot polynomials, knot groups, and hyperbolic invariants.