Originally Posted by Botnst

A parking lot is sort of like a standing wave. That is, a pattern that persists after the original cause is no longer present. For example, lets say at 10:00 AM a nincompoop occupies two parking spots at Walmart. The neighbors who subsequently park on either side will likely inadvertently encroach on adjacent parking spots. The adjacent drivers will adust their parking less, and so forth.

Then the original nincompoop leaves. Folks who try to park where the nincompoop parked will think that that the adjacent drivers caused the original problem, when actually they simply adjusted to the noncompoop.

And so forth.

Another instance of standing waves is in traffic accidents. In this case, often long after an accident is cleared, a traffic jam persists. If you watch the phenomenon closely you'll notice that a wave of congestion propagates away from the origin in each avenue affected by the accident. I suspect that the wave propagates in proprtion to the density and velocity of the of cars.

Anybody know for sure?

B