When most folks get ticketed for running a stop sign, most people wind up writing the court a check. UC San Diego physicist Dmitri Krioukov wrote a mathematical paper instead. Rather than throw his fallible human opinion on the mercy of the court, Krioukov uses a series of equations and graphs to prove that the accusing officer confused his car's real space-time trajectory "for a trajectory of a hypothetical object moving at approximately constant linear speed without stopping at the stop sign." In other words, the officer was wrong, but Krioukov stresses that it isn't the officer's fault. "This mistake is fully justified," he writes, pointing to the math. "As a result of this unfortunate coincidence, the O's perception of reality did not properly reflect reality." And to think, you probably never thought you'd use this kind of math in the real world.

Physicist uses math to get out of a traffic ticket, publishes findings originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.