Knots in Physics What are Atoms

1 Modern statistics indicates that as many as about 1% of all newborn babies have their umbilical cords knotted some sources even suggest that these babies statistically tend to have somewhat higher IQ later on in their lives. 

1 Several simple knots. For the trefoil knot 3i, two isomers are shown, they are mirror impages of one another. Also, two distinct composite knots are shown (called granny and square), combining different trefoil isomers. 

Isn t it a nice idea In our opinion, it is extremely beautiM it is a pity it did not prove true, but maybe it will play out at some other level some time, maybe in the theory of strings in subatomic particles — we can only hope that such beauty would not be wasted. Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost. — Charles Dickens. 

Returning to the story, W. Thomson got understandably excited and asked his friend and collaborator P.G. Tait (1831-1901) to make a table of possible knots and also try to compute the frequencies at which the knotted strings could oscillate — maybe, they hoped, it could explain the atomic spectra Tait worked hard, made first large table of knots and formulated several conjectures about classification of knots. The excitement among physicists continued for some years, but eventually nobody lesser than James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) grew sceptical, for there was no experimental support for the idea, and in 1878 he wrote in his letter to Tait  

Upon a liquid vortex wrought By Intellect in the Unseen residing. 

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