Posts tagged with “Mathematics”
MIT Hopes to Exorcise ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams
A really interesting article from Wired about how “phantom” traffic jams, which are without any real cause, form. One of the more amazing parts of the article is how mathematicians use preexisting formulas to solve traffic problems:
The mathematics of such traffic jams are strikingly similar to the equations that describe detonation waves produced by explosions, said Aslan Kasimov, a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Mathematics. Realizing this allowed the reseachers to solve traffic jam equations that were first theorized in the 1950s. The MIT researchers even came up with a name for this kind of gridlock - “jamiton.” It’s a riff on “soliton,” a term used in math and physics to desribe a self-sustaining wave that maintains its shape while moving.