>A new study reveals how knit fabrics [can take on versatile shapes](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.248201) that allow them to conform to the contours of a head or a body. The effect is the result of friction between the adjacent loops of fiber that make up a knit fabric, physicist Jérôme Crassous and colleagues report in the Dec. 13 *Physical Review Letters*.
>When a knit fabric is stretched and released, it springs back. One might imagine that the fabric always returns to the size and shape it previously had, akin to a rubber band. But “there is no unique shape,” says Crassous, of the University of Rennes in France. “There [are] many different possible shapes.” These forms are known as “metastable states.”
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>A new study reveals how knit fabrics [can take on versatile shapes](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.248201) that allow them to conform to the contours of a head or a body. The effect is the result of friction between the adjacent loops of fiber that make up a knit fabric, physicist Jérôme Crassous and colleagues report in the Dec. 13 *Physical Review Letters*.
>When a knit fabric is stretched and released, it springs back. One might imagine that the fabric always returns to the size and shape it previously had, akin to a rubber band. But “there is no unique shape,” says Crassous, of the University of Rennes in France. “There [are] many different possible shapes.” These forms are known as “metastable states.”
[Read more here](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fiber-friction-key-cozy-knits), and the [research article here](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.248201).