The Physics of Mosh Pits at Heavy Metal Concerts (Explained by Cornell Grad Students)

Speak­ing at the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety last month, Matthew Bier­baum, a Cor­nell grad stu­dent, pre­sent­ed a talk called “Col­lec­tive Motion at Heavy Met­al Con­certs,” where he made the case that physics is every­where, even in a mosh pit at a heavy met­al show. Along with three oth­er Cor­nell researchers, Bier­baum has ana­lyzed and mod­eled the col­lec­tive motions of mosh­ers in var­i­ous YouTube con­cert videos (like the one below) and dis­cov­ered that “dancers col­lide with each oth­er ran­dom­ly and at a dis­tri­b­u­tion of speeds that resem­bles par­ti­cles in a two-dimen­sion­al gas,” writes Lau­ren Wolfe in Chem­i­cal & Engi­neer­ing News.

To try and under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing in mosh pits, the researchers used a flock­ing-based sim­u­la­tion that helps “mod­el liv­ing beings as sim­ple par­ti­cles, reduc­ing com­plex behav­ioral dynam­ics to a few basic rules,” says Itai Cohen, the head of the research team. From this study, the Cor­nell team hopes to learn more about how seem­ing­ly chaot­ic crowds behave, and how smarter exit routes and evac­u­a­tion strate­gies can be designed.

You can learn more about their research by perus­ing the team’s pub­lished paper “Col­lec­tive Motion of Mosh­ers at Heavy Met­al Con­certs” or by watch­ing Bier­baum’s afore­men­tioned pre­sen­ta­tion in the grainy video below below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

The Physics of the Bike

Free Physics Cours­es Online


by | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.