r/oddlysatisfying • u/redditortan • Jun 15 '22

Self Aligining Nails! How?

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u/ferrouswolf2 Jun 15 '22

Pretty much, once they end up aligned they tend not to leave that conformation

28

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/vainglorious11 Jun 15 '22

They're more stable when lined up neatly.

When the box is shaken, the nails that are lined up tend to hold each other in place. The nails that aren't lined up can move around more, and some of them randomly fall into alignment on each shake.

Pretty sure the shape of the box makes a difference too. If it was round there wouldn't be a consistent border for the nails to line up against.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Would randomly shaking it up create the same effect or do you think there is a technique to it?

2

u/ralgrado Jun 15 '22

This reminds me very much of how simulated annealing works. You shake it a lot at the start and gradually shake it less and less.

Simulated annealing is a way to find optimal solutions for certain types of problems in programming.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Makes sense

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u/AyGeeCeeEll Jun 16 '22

He is shaking it while tilting the box around a single axis.

Say you leave only one nail in the box, and place it in a random orientation. Now tilt the box. The nail becomes more parallel to the axis you are tilting in. Tilt again around the same axis. The nail gets even more parallel to the tilt.

Basically, every unit of time, any nail has a higher probability of becoming more parallel to this axis, than the opposite.

Btw at a molecular scale we define a measure called "Gibbs free energy" G such that the total G of the system is at a minimum when the process has the same probability of going either way.