Physics and heavy metal don't seem to have a lot in common, but Matt Bierbaum and Jesse Silverberg have found a connection. Both are graduate students at Cornell University. They're also metal heads who enjoy going to concerts and hurling themselves into
Premium Link
Upgrade
pits full of like-minded fans.
About five years ago Silverberg took his girlfriend to her first gig. "Usually I would jump in the
Premium Link
Upgrade
pit," he says. "But this time I wanted her to be safe and have a good time, so we stayed out on the side and watched things from there."
While he was watching, he realized that the motion of people in a
Premium Link
Upgrade
pit looks kind of like molecules moving in a gas.
"It was basically just this random mess of collisions, which is essentially how you want to think about the gas in the air that we breathe," he says.
