May
27th
Thu
27th
Vicsek found that an overwhelming number of waves went only in one direction. In fact, in a second study a bias emerged: “We found that the proportion of clockwise to counter-clockwise is something like 60:40.” This study included an online survey of Mexican-wave participants. Bizarrely, of the 75 people who participated in this, all the wavers in Europe remembered their waves travelling clockwise around the stadiums, while 70% of those from Australia reported them going counterclockwise. It all seems rather reminiscent of that old myth of water spinning opposite ways down the plughole in the northern and southern hemispheres.
