Mystery Of Holes In T-shirts

Jack Dikian

December 2010

Have you noticed how t-shirts all end up with tiny holes, usually in clusters of about half a dozen usually in the same area – front and just above the zipper area. Curiously, this doesn't seem to happen on other clothing, just on knit t-shirts.

This seems to be happening to new unwashed shirts and so the reasonable theory that it might be occurring by the wash-dry cycle doesn’t fit. And why just t-shirts and why only the front area?

I’ve looked at abrasion related factors, how the clothes are folded, rodents..., and even if it’s somehow the result of leaning forward against the kitchen bench, or pushing up against the edge of the office desk.

Sure, besides being the proud owner of a wardrobe full of shirts with holes, the cost and inconvenience of having to buy another every few weeks – it seems entirely reasonable to give this matter a whole lot more thought.

After all, far far superior thinkers looked at the seemingly random movements of pollen suspended in a fluid and independently reasoned that the motion indirectly confirmed the existence of atoms and molecules. Those thinkers were non other than Albert Einstein and later Marian Smoluchowski in their work on Brownian motion.