TRAFFIC WAVES
A jam from almost nothing.
Tap one car’s brakes. Change the density and the drivers. Follow the wave through the traffic, then untangle it with speed traces and a space–time plot.
Enter the experimentSMALL INTERACTIONS. BIG PATTERNS.
Complexity
& Emergence
Nobody planned the pattern.
Everybody helped make it.
A driver slows down. The next driver responds. Across a whole road, those local interactions can become something you would never see by watching just one car. Discover how the behaviour of many becomes a pattern of its own.
STEP INTO AN EXPERIMENT
Can a jam appear
without an obstruction?
Ideas you’ll explore
Emergence
Interactions between individuals produce patterns across the whole system.
Stability
A small disturbance can fade away, persist, or grow.
Distributions
An average can hide a road full of very different experiences.