The unruly stitch of a dragon first attracted Sabetta Matsumoto to the mathematics of knitting. Unlike the regimented stitches of a sweater that march

The Beautiful Math of Knitting—Yes, Knitting—Could Create the Toughest Gear Ever

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2021-06-24 08:00:03

The unruly stitch of a dragon first attracted Sabetta Matsumoto to the mathematics of knitting. Unlike the regimented stitches of a sweater that march two-by-two across a textile, the whiskers of this dragon stretched daringly across a lace shawl in a way Matsumoto had never seen before—and she was determined to understand the math behind it.

“I knit really crazy things, and this was the first time that I’d really encountered something that was [so] different,” she says.

Matsumoto, an assistant professor of physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, studies the limits and possibilities of knitted materials to understand how different stitches transform the mechanical properties—the stretchiness and support—of everyday fabrics.

In her latest project, funded by the National Science Foundation, Matsumoto and her students are searching for a fundamental equation (like those that describe gravity or the flow of water) to perfectly describe the properties of knitted fabrics.

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