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Apr 15, 2009 18:18

Random cool fact:  Tennis shoes occasionally fall off ships in the ocean.  Wait, that's not the cool part, that's just litter.  The cool part is that when they eventually wash up on beaches around the world, certain beaches only get left shoes and other beaches only get right shoes.  Why is that?

Take off your shoes and flip them over (shoes float with the soles toward the sky).  Notice that the curve along the inner parts of the soles are not identical, they are mirror-images of each other.  When wind and waves push against the shoes, they catch along the curves differently, pushing left and right shoes in slightly different directions.  Over the vast expanse of the oceans, this adds up to left shoe beaches and right shoe beaches!
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