We’ve all had this occur multiple times in our lives: we do the laundry, one sock from the pair goes missing. We check the washer and the dryer, it’s nowhere to be found. It happens often enough to be a running cultural, universal joke. But it makes no sense. How does it happen?
In: Planetary Science
Multiple things, it’s iconic because it’s annoying and relatable
Why does it happen? First off, socks are probably the smallest single piece of laundry so you can easily miss them before you put them in the machine, when you transition to the machine, when you go to hang them. So you can drop and not see them easily, or simply don’t see you didn’t put a single sock into the machine but left it in the laundry basket. Then they just get stock in other pieces like the leg of trousers, a bed sheet (probably won’t find it for a month or longer).
Last point, you just recognize it. If the same happens to a random slip or under pants, you probably won’t notice, but when you have a single sock left, you know one is missing, everything else is pretty much “on their own”, so no reminder that they are missing
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