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"Lofty Lingo Boils Down to Dissection of Traffic," by Carl T. Hall. San
Francisco Chronicle, 8 January 2001.
"The Physics of Gridlock," by Stephen Budiansky. The Atlantic Monthly,
December 2000, pages 20-24.
These two articles discuss the perplexing problem of constructing mathematical models of traffic flow. The article by Hall describes research by H. Michael Zhang, a civil engineer at the University of California, Davis. Most models view traffic as a kind of plumbing system in which the cars move as if in a flowing liquid. Other models stress the individual behavior of drivers. Zhang's work is significant because it "represents an attempt to tie several elements together in a single computer model," the article says.
The article by Budiansky reports on recent work by a group of theoretical physicists in Germany. Their models, based on well-established equations describing the movement of gas molecules, resulted in some unexpected conclusions, such as the notion that traffic congestion can arise spontaneously with no apparent cause. The research has caused some controversy among traffic engineers.
--- Allyn Jackson
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