A Brief Introduction to Chaos Theory

Why is it possible to predict events on the other side of the universe, millions of years in the future, but nearly impossible to predict the weather in a few weeks?

cha•os (noun)

when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future

Second Law of Thermodynamics

The entropy, or disorder, of a closed system can only increase.

Edward Lorenz

• A meteorologist at MIT
• Discovered chaos when he used approximated measurements to replicate a previously computed weather model
• Created the term 'butterfly effect'
• Introduced the notion of strange attractors

Examples

Fractals

Strange Attractors

To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing! People were talking about the end of physics; relativity and quantum physics looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything! But they only explain the very big and the very small; the universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary side stuff, which is our lives – the things people write poetry about – clouds, daffodils, waterfalls, and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in. These things are full of mystery.

– Valentine Coverly, Arcadia

The End