“Humans tend to swing their arms when they walk, a curious behaviour since the arms play no obvious role in bipedal gait. It might be costly to use muscles to swing the arms, and it is unclear whether potential benefits elsewhere in the body would justify such costs.” If you’re a living thing, energy is […]
Tag: walk
A Drunkard’s Walk Around Nice (with a mathematical solution)
“An inebriated person in Nice (see Figure 1) takes a walk, each step in one of the four cardinal directions, north (N), south (S), east (E), and west (W). We are interested in those walks beginning at the center of the Promenade des Anglais (at the southern end of town) and ending anywhere on the […]
Pet Dogs Synchronize Walking Pace With Owners [research study]
Further progress in the study of whether and how pet dogs synchronize their walking pace with that of their owners: “Pet Dogs Synchronize Their Walking Pace With That of Their Owners In Open Outdoor Areas,” Charlotte Duranton, Thierry Bedossa, and Florence Gaunet, Animal Cognition, epub 2017. The authors, at Aix-Marseille University, AVA Association [Cuy-Saint-Fiacre], and […]
Umbrella Progress on a Crowded Sidewalk (podcast #96)
What happens when lots of people with umbrellas walk in opposite directions on a crowded sidewalk? A research study explores that very question, and we explore that study, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams discusses a published lotsa-people-walking-with-umbrellas study. Melissa Franklin, a Harvard physics professor who designed parts of the Large […]