Missing sock

Two common plausible explanations for missing socks are that they are lost in transit to or from the laundry, or that they are trapped inside, between, or behind components of ("eaten by") washing machines or clothes dryers.

Socks may also bunch up or unravel and get caught in the water drain pipe of washing machines or in the lint trap of dryers.

[3][4] In 2008, American science educator and writer George B. Johnson proposed several hypotheses for why socks go missing: In his particular case, Johnson rejected all hypotheses except the last one, as it was possible for small items like socks to slip behind the dryer's spinning drum because of gaps between the drum and the dryer's outer metal case.

[5] A 2016 pseudo-scientific consumer study commissioned by Samsung Electronics UK (to advertise their new washing machines where users could add more laundry to a load one piece at a time) referenced multiple human errors—including errors of human perception or psychology—to explain why socks go missing: they may become mismatched by poor folding and sorting of laundry, be intentionally misplaced or stolen, fall in hard-to-reach or hard-to-see spaces behind furniture or radiators, or blow off of clothes lines in high wind.

For example, in the 1996 book The Nature of Space and Time by the physicists Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, they posit that spontaneous black holes are responsible for lost socks.

In the 2001 American children's film Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, lost objects including socks are magically transported to the home of a character named Gort, who is a compulsive hoarder.

In the British children's book series Oddies, odd socks are transported to a planet called Oddieworld by a magical washing machine.