Abstract
Human movement is one of the ubiquitous phenomena observed in nature. Daily observations show substantial evidence for human movements across a broad range of scales. Macroscopically, human individual mobility patterns on the geographical scales can be well captured by the continuous-time random walk framework. Recent empirical studies show that two “phases” corresponding to collective motions coexist in insect swarms. Yet, the quantification of human motion on the microscopic level keeps missing, and validation for such a thermodynamic description of human movement remains unrevealed. In the present study, we use radio frequency identification technology to collect high-resolution location data and investigate human movement driven by social interaction in classrooms. We conduct structure as well as dynamic measures and estimate the effective “temperatures” for these social systems. Empirical measures suggest two social “phases” in analogy to fluid and liquid-vapor coexistence, associated with relatively high and low “temperatures” in classrooms. Besides, we propose a simple model inspired by empirical observations. The numerical simulations based on the proposed model are capable of reproducing the systems with two social phases and qualitatively agree with empirically observed measurements.