Catchword: jamiton

Contributed by: Nancy Friedman

Filed under: English, Automobiles & Transportation

Part of speech: n.

Quotation: We’ve all been there—stuck in traffic, inching along, running late and getting angry when suddenly everyone starts moving. Just like that, the road clears. No flashing lights, no mangled cars, no clue to suggest what went wrong. They’re called phantom traffic jams. [...] The mathematics of such traffic jams are strikingly similar to the equations that describe detonation waves produced by explosions, said Aslan Kasimov, a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Mathematics. Realizing this allowed the reseachers to solve traffic jam equations that were first theorized in the 1950s. The MIT researchers even came up with a name for this kind of gridlock—“jamiton.” It’s a riff on “soliton,” a term used in math and physics to desribe a self-sustaining wave that maintains its shape while moving.

Article or document title:
“MIT Hopes to Exorcise ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams” (URL)

Author:
Tony Borroz

Article, document, publication, web site:
Wired: Autopia

Date of publication:
June 17, 2009

This catchword has yet to be researched.