New paper on why shaking faster doesn't untangle

WHY SHAKING FASTER DOES NOT UNTANGLE: FREQUENCY-SELECTIVE EXTRACTION OF FILAMENTS FROM TANGLED MATTER

Ishant Tiwari, Sutikshan Bansal, Rosalind Huang, Chenyi Fei, Jörn Dunkel, Vishal Patil, and Saad Bhamla. arXiv (2026).

We show that shaking a thread out of a tangle works best at a middle frequency, where it is fast enough to let the thread go slack and snap taut, but slow enough that the tug still reaches the whole tangle before the shake reverses. Download the paper.