There’s not much on the internet regarding the history of the Palomar knot beyond it being created by Chet Palomar, a Scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts of America. No matter the full story, every angler ...

But a new study highlights one area of intuitive physics that’s deceptively difficult: judging how strong a knot is. Take a look at these four knots, which may look similar but are all distinct.

Half a century ago, a brilliant young mathematician named John Horton Conway discovered, of all things, a knot. This wasn’t the sort of knot that you’d be likely to encounter in the real world. You ...