JengaJam.com >> Lacing Methods

JengaJam.com >> Lacing Methods

How many possible ways are there to lace an average shoe? This simple question, when answered with mathematics, results in some surprisingly big numbers - on an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets, there are 1,961,990,553,600 ways to feed a shoelace though those 12 eyelets.

It hardly seems possible that there could be quite that many ways to feed a lace through 12 eyelets! So let's look at the mathematics:

* Feed through one of 12 eyelets from either inside or outside. That's 24 possible ways to start.

* Continue through one of 11 remaining eyelets from either inside or outside (x 22 more ways).

* Then 10 remaining eyelets (x 20 more ways). We've only gone through three eyelets and we're already up to 24 x 22 x 20 = 10,560 ways!

* By the time we reach the last eyelet (x 2 more ways), the possible ways have multiplied to 24 x 22 x 20 x 18 x 16 x 14 x 12 x 10 x 8 x 6 x 4 x 2 ways, a staggering total of almost 2 TRILLION possibilities!

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I found this stuff yesterday when I was at Joey's. They've got a whole bunch of different ways to lace up your shoes. I'm using the "Straight (Fashion) Lacing" method (picture above). It looks nice and even though the site says it's difficult I didn't have any trouble.

That site was posted by Sara Lane and mentioned on Attack of the Show (*cough*thescreensavers*cough*) the other day.

I got Joey all set up with StumbleUpon too. He found some pretty cool stuff. Like how to fold a dollar bill and make it look like a tee shirt. I tried it and now I've done three so far. The first one was pretty hard, but now it's easy. I should make a bunch and sell them for $2.50 each or something.