Mosh Pit Physics, Chemistry Of The Bar

Abstract

When Matthew Bierbaum stepped up to the front of a crowded ballroom at the American Physical Society national meeting last month, he didn’t begin his research presentation in a conventional way. “Who here has been to a metal concert?” the graduate student asked. “Throw up some horns!” he egged on attendees to simultaneously extend their pinkies and index fingers as a sign of heavy-metal love. Bierbaum was in Baltimore not to discuss musical resonances, but to share his findings about mosh pits—formations at punk and heavy-metal concerts in which dancers slam into one another for fun. Together with fellow grad student Jesse L. Silverberg and professors James P. Sethna and Itai Cohen at Cornell University, Bierbaum analyzed and modeled the collective motions of the slam dancers on myriad YouTube concert videos. A paper summarizing their results is available on the preprint site ArXiv ( bit.ly/Y4xxpZ). In a run-of-the-mill mosh pit, ...