The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a ZigZag!

As anyone who has ever climbed a steep mountain knows, zigzagging is a more efficient way to reach the top than a straight line. A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but new research shows that it isn t necessarily the fastest or easiest path to follow. Could this be a metaphor for life too? I read this and thought, there's hope!

That s particularly true when terrain is not level, and now American and British researchers have developed a mathematical model showing that a zigzag course provides the most efficient way for humans to go up or down steep slopes.

"I think zigzagging is something people do intuitively,  said Marcos Llobera, a University of Washington assistant professor of anthropology who is a landscape archaeologist.  "People recognize that zigzagging, or switchbacks, help but they don t realize why they came about."

Llobera, who is interested in reconstructing patterns of movement within past landscapes, said the model and a study that describes it stem from earlier research that looked at the emergence of trail systems.

You would expect a similar process on any landscape, but when you have changes in elevation it makes things more complicated,  he said.  There is a point, or critical slope, where it becomes metabolically too costly to go straight ahead, so people move at an angle, cutting into the slope. Eventually they need to go back toward the direction they were originally headed and this creates zigzags. The steeper the slope, the more important it is that you tackle it at the right angle.

Trails evolve, among other reasons, because of physical differences in people and the differences in the biomechanics and energy cost of ascending and descending a slope.

Llobera said many other physical factors can influence the creation and development of a trail or path, and that the new model is a simplified one and a place to start. Eventually he hopes to build a simulation engine that would allow archaeologists to plug in a terrain and explore different patterns of movement through it. He is particularly interested in using it with landscapes that have resulted from the accumulations of various societies and cultures.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

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Source:

http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=39870