Edit: I was putting on a shrunken sweater and I thought maybe the fabrics were bunched together, so I started tugging at various parts of the sweater to try and loosen the strings. Then it occurred to me that it would never retain its previous shape. Is it just (optically, for lack of a better explanation) smaller because of the tighter fabrics, or did some of the (mass) escape and is somewhere else (ie in the air) or what?
In: Chemistry
Unshrunk clothes are loose fibers, with air in between them. Shrunk clothes are the same fibers, but without air in between. The addition and then removal of water is just what makes the air escape and stay escaped.
Kind of like how you can stuff a sleeping bag into a smaller stuffsack, or hair into a hat.
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