Author: Emily Conover / Source: Science News
Marathoners queuing up for a big race tend to go with the flow, surging toward the start line like a fluid.
Using footage of runners moving in groups toward the start of the Chicago Marathon, researchers developed a theory that treats the crowd like a liquid to explain its movement.
The theory correctly predicted the motion of crowds of runners at marathons in two other locations, physicists report in the Jan. 4 Science.Previous studies have devised rules for how individuals act within a crowd and used that behavior to describe crowd motion (SN: 1/10/15, p. 15). But to understand how wine swirls in a glass, you don’t need…
The post The physics of fluids explains how crowds of marathon runners move appeared first on FeedBox.