Metalheads Have A Gas In Moshpits According To Study
June 9, 2013, 11 years ago
According to Theregister.co.uk, metalheads in mosh pits at heavy metal gigs form patterns that resemble the behaviour of gas particles, according to a study in Physical Review Letters titled Collective Motion Of Humans In Mosh And Circle Pits At Heavy Metal Concerts (download PDF here).
Penned by four boffins from Cornell University's Department of Physics and Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, the study considered over 100 mosh pit videos from YouTube, before subjecting six that offered the most useful camera angles to detailed scrutiny.
The paper describes those videos as follows:
“Here, we study large crowds (102 –105attendees) of people under the extreme conditions typically found at heavy metal concerts. Often resulting in injuries the collective mood is in?uenced by the combination of loud (130 dB), fast (blast beats exceeding 300 beats per min) music, synchronized with bright ?ashing lights, and frequent intoxication.”The researchers' initial hypothesis was that “Mosh pits can form spontaneously or at the suggestion of the performing band, but in both cases, no micromanagement of individual actions is generally involved."
"Qualitatively, this phenomenon resembles the kinetics of gaseous particles, even though moshers are self-propelled agents that experience dissipative collisions and exist at a much higher density than most gaseous systems.”
Read more at Theregister.co.uk.
