• Question: How does the butterfly effect come into choas theory?

    Asked by esthercoleman to Ed, Keith, Tish, Nicola, Rachel on 11 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Nicola Lazenby

      Nicola Lazenby answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Originally I had no idea on what this even meant………but being an engineer I wanted to find out! Apparently, it’s all to do with the behaviour of a dynamic/moving system and how the starting conditions can influence how it operates!

    • Photo: Edward Taylor

      Edward Taylor answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Right here goes (definitely didn’t just google “chaos effect” and “butterfly effect”)

      Chaos theory regards systems which should have a predictable (or deterministic) outcome based on the input. For example if you roll a ball down a slope and it lands somewhere, then when you put that ball down the slope with the exact same starting position it should land in exactly the same place as last time.

      The butterfly effect refers to the seemingly unpredictable nature of very slightly modifying the starting conditions and yielding wildly different results. In our example this is like putting the ball in a very slightly different place at the top of the slope and finding that the ball lands in a completely different place, no where near where it landed the first time, even though the starting position was almost identical. The butterfly effect is therefore the tiny change (like the flap of a butterfly’s wing) which creates a huge difference (a hurricane in america).

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