Welcome to both of you! We're glad to have you join us.
Buzzwang, check out the Hypography
Here with links to websites that have information on it.
I've done a little reading on it myself and some of this is what I've learned.
First of all, chaos is the ability to get random, unexpected results from what should be a normal equation. With Chaos theory, scientists also try to find a "pattern" in the random, chaotic results.
One example is in the 1960's a meterologist, Edward Lorenz, was trying to work out a way to predict weather using a computer program, but was only able to come up with what it might be. Later he wanted to look at a specific part of the results again and ran the program again. When it came out, the results were completely different from the first time around. What caused this is the first time the computer figured it to 6 decimal places, but when he re-entered the data he rounded it to 3 decimal places. Although he should have got results close to the first time, they were completely off. This is called the "Butterfly effect". The starting points of the 2 equations were very similar, but the results came out with huge differences, just like the atmosphere without the butterfly, and then the effects that the small addition of the butterfly produces(in the quote below).
The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)
Noah
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