Chaos Theory?

Question

Can anyone explain the chaos theory to a curious science nerd of a 13 year old girl? Its not impossible - i think. Please try!

Answer 1

Is called entropy. Order needs disorder.
Is like a fire that hits a beautiful forest. You may think that the fire is completely bad but new life will grow from dead of the trees. The new forest will be as beautiful as the old one and the tress can be in some cases more resistance to the fire.
In the macro view of the Universe, the violent explosion of a supernova will spreed the elements necessary to creation other stars and planets.
We are part of the circle of life in the micro and the macro cosmos.

Answer 2

The first answerer is right as far as it goes--and that's a well known example--the "butterfly effect" its called.

But here's a bit more info:
Scientists have always known that real world measurments have at least some "error" factor. EX: if you measure the temperature to an accuracy of 1/100 degree--that's pretty precise--but you could be a tiny bit off (say 1/1000 degree). If you get more precise--measure to 1/10,000 degree--you still can have a tiny error--a few millionths of a degree.

But (for a number of plausible reasons) they though those tiny errors would tend to cancel themselves out in any measurement (whether of temperature, weight, air pressure, etc.) because some errors would be a bit tooo much--and some a bit too little.

In the early 1960s, with the first really good computers, scientists could start making computer simulations (models) of weather-using tens of millions of caluculations. And when they did so--the first time anyone could use so many computations in a single problem--they found the errors DIDN'T averae out.

This turned out to be a very big deal. The math guys spent quite a while trying to figure out why the math wasn't doing what they thought it would.
Their answer became the basis of what we call CHaos Theory.

What the basic principle of chaos theory says is (as best as you can say it without the math) is that those tiny errors willl tend to accumulate --eventually making any really complex system (one that includes billions or trillions of indiivdual parts--like a weather system) unpredictable beyond a certain point. In the real world, this means that you can predict the weather (in theory!) very accurately a few days or weeks ahead--but beyond that you cant--even in theory--predict it exactly. So--you can make a good prediction that it will be sunny tomorrow--but although we know most days later in the spring will be sunny--whe have no way right now of knowing WHICH days will be sunny a month from now.

But Chaos theory ha s gone way beyond that. One of the important discoveries was that, although we cant predict these tiny errors exactly--they do form patterns that repeat--but each repetion is jsut a bit different. The most famous example is called the "Mandelbrot set" (named after the mathemetician who discovered this)--and you can find images of it on line.

That led to what is now called "fractal geometry" It turns out that a lot of things in nature--not just weather--behave this way. Scientists can use the math to analyze a lot of things--one example is that it makes it possible to "enhance" images using computers. Many of the images we get from space probes--and from modern medical technology (of the inside of the body) are incredibly precise--and its because of that kind of mathematical analys of the images.

Answer 3

Scientists like to be able to explain everything. It's called cause and effect - when we know the cause of most events, we can predict the outcome with 100% accuracy. For instance, we know the exact positions of the planets far into the future. We know if we combine 2 parts hydrogen with 1 part oxygen, we will get a water molecule - every single time.
Unfortunately, there are some things that either we don't completely understand, or the cause is so complex and contains so many variables that the out come appears to be random. It is these events that we refer to as chaotic - we simply can't predict them with any certainty.
The weather, sub-atomic emissions and other such phenomenon can't be 100% accurately predicted, hence, we have the chaos theory.

Answer 4

The Chaos Theory is about the infinate variations in everything. For example: you walk to the mall. You may or may not meet a friend. If you do, you go get a drink. If you don't, you may go into a store, where you see another friend. If you had met the first friend, you wouldn't have seen the other friend. So every action can create lots of different results. The same thing applies to everything in nature and the universe.

Answer 5

Simply put, Chaos Theory postulates that small changes can result in giant affects. For example, the beating of the wings of a butterfly in China could create a giant wind storm in Nebraska.

Science Teacher

Answer 6

The universe is not chaotic.
There is a slight uncertainty due to the quantum effect but the universe evolves flawlessly and will run it's course without encountering any chaotic state that it cannot handle.

Answer 7

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=93999391631761918&q=Carl+Sagan+Chaos+Theory&hl=en
Marie, we are visual learners, at least... most people are. I think you will learn so much about the chaos theory with this Google video.

I truly hope you will enjoy this as much as I did when I was about your age.