Physics and Physicists

Back in 2008, I reported a rather interesting (at least, to me) use of some of the techniques from statistics and physics to find the most optimum boarding method onto an airplane. This study was done purely via mathematical modeling. Of course, being physicists/scientists, just having a model isn't enough. One has to verify it.

Now come a report whereby the author of that original paper and others have done an experimental study various methods of boarding an airplane.

Abstract: We report the results of an experimental comparison of different airplane boarding methods. This test was conducted in a mock 757 fuselage, located on a Southern California soundstage, with 12 rows of six seats and a single aisle. Five methods were tested using 72 passengers of various ages. We found a significant reduction in the boarding times of optimized methods over traditional methods. These improved methods, if properly implemented, could result in a significant savings to airline companies.

I would say that airlines such as Southwest could learn quite a bit from this study, since they have such a short turn-around time for their airplanes.

And I love it when there's a follow up to a study such as this.

Zz.

I've heard about this research study, but I didn't pay that much attention to it until I saw that they had a video of this effect that was rather neat. It also confirms what I had suspected for a while.

The study was done by a group of Japanese scientists/mathematicians about traffic jams that happened without any bottleneck[1]. In other words, there's no obvious obstacles, such as an on-ramp, or a constrictions, etc. that would be obvious causes for a traffic jam. All they did was increase the traffic density, and at some point, there's some "critical density" in which traffic jams simply occurs because people just don't all drive at the same speed.

What is need is that you can actually this taking place in the video that they have included. I've always suspected this. I drive roughly 31 miles each way to work every day. I sometime get stuck in a couple of slow spots where traffic either slows down or stopped for periods of time. Yet, as you you drive some more, you speed back up again as if nothing has happened, and you don't see any reason why the traffic slowed down. I tend to blame it on slow cars in the left lane, but I had no proof that was the usual cause. Now, I have some evidence to back my haunch! :)

Zz.

[1] Y. Sugiyama et al., New Journal of Physics v.10 p.033001 (2008).

Kids, there is an example on where, your training as a physicist or a scientist, can prepare you to tackle a problem analytically and systematically, even when it isn't about physics or science. Your physics education prepares you for a whole lot more than just doing physics.

I don't try to highlight something when it isn't even published yet, or when it isn't by a well-known figure, but this preprint is way too much fun to ignore. So I thought I'd bring it up. It is by Jason Steffen, a postdoc at Fermilab. I'm guessing from the comment he wrote that, while boarding a plane on his way to attend a conference, he somehow observed how the airline boarded the passengers and decided to study the most optimum way for this process to occur to minimize the boarding time. Thus, he came up with this study.

Like I said, it is a very entertaining reading. I hope someone can alert the airlines on this, but we should wait till it gets published in the submitted journal first.

Zz.

Addendum: He has a newer version of this paper that can be found here.