By Laura Sivitz
How can you stop a panicked crowd from stampeding? A team of physicists has developed an unusual computer model to make some suggestions.
While other models of crowd behavior typically treat a group as a homogeneous fluid, this new simulation views each person as an individual particle. It assumes that these people-particles vary in their willingness to follow others, and it includes the pushing and rubbing forces that can generate pressures strong enough to bend steel barriers.