The mosh pit can be a dangerous place, depending on the show you go to (especially late 90s, early 00s Pantera mosh pits) but what is the science behind them?! One Cornell student wondered this exact question and came up with a valid argument explaining the physics of science. Here is an excerpt:
Being a physicist first and a mosher second ("fieldwork was independently funded"), the student, Jesse Silverberg, can't help but notice curious patterns in what had always felt like the epitome of chaos. "Being on the outside for the first time, I was absolutely amazed at what I saw — there were all sorts of collective behaviors emerging that I never would have noticed from the inside." So for an even better perspective, he turns to YouTube, to figure out what happens to people under the "extreme conditions" borne of a combination of "loud, fast music (130 dB, 350 beats per minute) … bright, flashing lights, and frequent intoxication."
..Moshers, as they "move randomly, colliding with one another in an undirected fashion," seem a lot like gas particles, the researchers note. Or, as Silverberg explained to me: "It turns out that the statistical description we use for gasses matches the behavior of people in mosh pits. In other words, people bounce around like the molecules in a gas"
If you got all of that, and it made sense to you, you can read the entire four-page paper right here, it includes charts and formulas and a lot of other nerdy stuff you don't normally expect from a metalhead. You can even simulate your own mosh pit. Science, people! It's amazing.
[via MetalSucks]
