Assuming “in the air” means you aren’t suspended by anything like a plane.

Saturn style rings

I dont even know where to start trying to figure this out. Requesting so in the morning I can show this to my kids and have them guess, and then show them what this community does best. Which is give shockingly good or hilariously funny answers. First time poster, long time lurker....dont let me down please🤞

Twelve minutes to reach row 8 on my last flight got me curious, so I went looking for whether anyone has actually measured this.

Steffen (2011) hired 72 people and a mock 757 cabin and timed five boarding orders. Results: his own alternating order 3:36, windows-first 4:13, fully random 4:44, back-to-front 6:11, block groups 6:54.

The reason random beats organised is the nice bit of maths. Boarding time is the length of the longest chain of people who block each other. Bachmat et al. (2006) proved this by mapping the cabin onto 2D spacetime geometry. Back-to-front makes one chain of 72, because everyone is heading for the same three rows.

A random order's longest chain is the longest increasing subsequence of a shuffled sequence, which grows like 2√N: about 17 for 72 passengers. That factor is the result.

Sources: Steffen & Hotchkiss, J. Air Transp. Manag. 2012 (arXiv:1108.5211); Bachmat et al., J. Phys. A 39 L453 (physics/0512020); the 2√N law is Vershik–Kerov 1977.

What's the longest you've stood in an aisle?

In Detail, if anyone wants to learn more.

Assuming it was around 90 degrees (f) in Bradenton, FL yesterday where it happened.

We are discussing the texture and feel of these incredible black balls. How dense would they be?