8 Biggest Irritations In Life Explained By Science

7. Those Dang Tangled Headphones

It doesn't matter how carefully you place your headphones into your pocket, they will alway emerge as a soul-destroying nest of wires that you must spend the next five minutes untangling.

Thankfully, some plucky scientists are on the case, placing different lengths of string into boxes and tumbling it around nearly 3,500 times. They found that a string the length of headphones, around 139 cm, has a 50% chance of forming a horrible knot when placed in your pocket. This is then made worse by the "Y" shape of headphones adding another layer of complexity.

Also consider that fact that there are only a few ways for headphones to exist in a nicely ordered "untangled" state, whereas there are virtually infinite was that they could be in a chaotic "tangled" state. It's like entropy but with headphones.

This phenomenon isn't limited to just headphones, and scientist in the '60s even noticed it happening to long strings of DNA. Research into headphone knots, and subsequent prevention (fix them in a loop, FYI) has actually led to a better understanding of how enzymes in our bodies prevent DNA tangles.