Aside from the research grants that they get to study monkeys fucking, breast sizes, and other noble efforts, they also get asked to investigate some of the most baffling mysteries that modern society has to offer. Walk with me, won’t you?
Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause. Many traffic jams leave drivers baffled as they finally reach the end of a tail-back to find no visible cause for their delay.
The team developed a mathematical model to show the impact of unexpected events such as a lorry pulling out of its lane on a dual carriageway. Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still.
The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The model predicts that this is a very typical scenario on a busy highway (above 15 vehicles per km). The jam moves backwards through the traffic creating a so-called ‘backward travelling wave’, which drivers may encounter many miles upstream, several minutes after it was triggered.
Wow. That must come straight from a government think tank to achieve such amazing results. How do these fucks get granted millions of dollars for research and only have to turn in an answer that an 8-year-old child could deduce?
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe when one guy pushes on his brakes, it makes people behind him hit their brakes or something. Can I have my lollipop now?”
Yes Billy, you can. Thank you for saving us 8 million in research funding.
Great! Why didn’t I publish my findings years ago? I better release the results of my other experiments before they waste any more money. Other experiments include:
Hangovers: After spending several hundred (possibly thousand) dollars over the past 7 years, I have concluded that drinking obscene amounts of alcohol in nighttime hours may subsequently lead to mornings full of headaches and ugly women in my bed. The severity of both can be directly attributed to the number of shots I took.
Women: The hotter they are, the less likely they are to fuck me. Spending far to many hours hitting on attractive females, I have come to the conclusion that her rating (R) multiplied by 10 is equal to the Percent Chance She Won’t Fuck Me (F). Rx10=F.
I’ve got millions of them…all ready to be tested, once I receive the 5 million dollars per study!
Simulation:
http://vwisb7.vkw.tu-dresden.de/~treiber/MicroApplet/
Despite your extreme oversimplification, the whole traffic jam out of no where thing is pretty interesting. It’s not just “Jackass A hits brakes, Jackass B hits brakes, etc” Its crazy crap like “Grandma is going 50 instead of 55” and the next thing you know, WASHAM! Traffic jam like whoa.