Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Car-ticles

This blog is already too Chicago-centric. I'm really going to resist the temptation.

Instead I'll dig something whimsical and scientific out of my bookmark archive: traffic waves.

"Why had I never noticed all the 'traffic fluid dynamics' out there? Once my brain became sensitized to it, I started seeing quite a variety of interesting things occurring. Eventually I started using my car to poke at the flowing traffic. Observation eventually leads to experimentation, no? There are amazing things you can do as an 'amateur traffic dynamicist.' You can drive like an 'anti-rubbernecker' and erase slowdowns created by other drivers."

I don't really drive, but I find this fascinating, and for a couple of years now I've found myself thinking about it every time I'm stuck on a slow-moving street.

This is a part of Bill Beaty's extensive and endlessly diverting Science Hobbyist site. The "anti-skepticism" articles make it a little harder to take him seriously, and the corresponding links to "paranormal phenomena" put me all out of patience, but his other essays and experiments are delightfully enthusiastic, imaginative, and appealing.

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Okay, just a little more politics and baseball. Did you know that apparently Cubs fan John Cusak is dating potential first daughter Alexandra Kerry?

I'm no good at resisting temptation.

UPDATE: I can resist this even less: Alan Keyes vs. Barack Obama? What an interesting race that will be. My mom, long-time Keyes fan, may yet disinherit me...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OOh, traffic waves are fun. When stuck in traffic I tend to set myself a challenge of never actually stopping. A byproduct is that this does smooth out the waves behind me.

I presume you're familiar with the M25, by reputation even if not actual experience? In case not, it's an orbital motorway around London with a circumference of ~120mi (I think), and a reputation for being a big round car park. Well, solitons have been observed going twice round it. This is very cool :-)

-Simon W

Mary said...

Sometimes when I think about traffic waves and whatnot, I get a disconcerting sense that drivers don't really control cars at all, only mediate their interactions. When the brake lights ahead of me go on, I'm really not choosing to tap the breaks -- I have no choice. I brake, and my lights go on, and then the lights of the person behind me, and then the lights of the person behind them... The signal transmits itself without humans really choosing to transmit anything.

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