A good sweater is like a cozy hug made out of yarn. For that, you can thank friction.
A new study reveals how knit fabrics can take on versatile shapes that allow them to conform to the contours of a head or a body. The effect is the result of friction between the adjacent loops of fiber that make up a knit fabric, physicist Jérôme Crassous and colleagues report in the Dec. 13 Physical Review Letters.
When a knit fabric is stretched and released, it springs back. One might imagine that the fabric always returns to the size and shape it previously had, akin to a rubber band. But
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