Complex Systems Model used to Investigate Human Relationships
Oxford physics undergraduate Richard Ecob, graduate student Dave Smith and their supervisor Neil Johnson challenge the belief that modern life makes us more sophisticated in relationships but also choosier. Seeing the similarity between the probability of the nucleus of an atom decaying and that of a couple breaking up, Richard Ecob adapted a system for modelling atoms in radioactive decay in order to investigate how we choose partners - what happens when there is an increase in the list of individual preferences and/or density of potential partners? Some findings were surprising.
http://www.ifr.ac.uk/Media/NewsReleases/SET2005.pdf