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The Chaos Theory By Mike Welch The Chaos Theory is not a theory as some might think.

In part it is a theory, but it is also a whole different branch of mathematics that is very sensitive to initial conditions. (Ditto) Also, there is a lot of history behind this theory or branch of math. In the study of chaos people have also found many ways to apply it for conventional means. Chaos is not in the normal class of mathematics. It is in the probabilistic class. This means that you wont get a definite answer. Instead you will get a likelihood or a probability of something happening. For example when you roll a die you have 1/6 chance of landing on any given face. It is the same concept for the Chaos Theory (Andrews). When people talk about chaos being sensitive to initial conditions they are talking about the starting values in a problem (Wiki-many). In chaos the values of the numbers change so much they appear to have an underlying pattern. This is not true. In a chaotic system there is always an underlying pattern but usually it is very hard to find (Andrews). This tendency to have exponential differences because of small adjustments in the starting values is commonly referred to as the Butterfly Effect. In order for something to be chaotic there are three classifications that it must go in. The first thing is that it must have sensitivity to initial conditions which you already knew about. The second characteristic that it has to have is it must be topologically mixing. The last thing that it must have is that its orbits must be dense. This means that when the parts are plotted on a number line the lines must be elliptical and close together (Wiki-many). When you want to plot a chaotic system on a graph by hand it is nearly impossible. It isnt hard because the math formulas are difficult, but quite the opposite. It is hard because of how many iterations it

goes through. This made chaos almost impossible to complete until the invention of the computer. (Wikimany). The first time computers started being used for the Chaos Theory was in 1962 and this happened by accident. Edward Lorenz made a computer model to try and predict the weather. He used several different formulas for his model. Half way through he decided he would go back and put the numbers in saving the time of starting all over. (Andrews) When he came back he noticed that something wasnt right. The numbers werent exactly the same as they should be. They kept changing and over the course of several months they had changed exponentially. You couldnt even tell that one was related to the other. The change was because the computer had rounded the numbers he had put in. Instead of being .506127 like he had typed in, the computer had rounded to .506. That one thousandths of a part changed the outcome that drastically. So, effectively the weather is chaotic because it follows the rules of Chaos. Since this discovery was made we know the reason why that we cant effectively predict the weather for more than several days. Scientists consider themselves lucky if their satellites read the earths surface temperature to a one thousandths of a part. We know that even this miniscule amount will make a huge difference throwing off predictions. (Wiki-many) Even though Edward Lorenz was the first one to apply the Chaos Theory to Weather, he wasnt the founder of the theory. It was discovered 90 years earlier by Henri Poincare in the 1880s while studying the three body problem (Ditto). This problem has to do with the orbits of the planets. He saw that it wasnt easy to plot the movements of the planets. Henry concluded that the reason behind this break in Physics was because you cant predict how they are affected by other small things. He didnt name it chaos but he is the one credited for the idea (Ditto) (Andrews).

The Chaos Theory didnt become generally accepted and wasnt well known until late in the 1970s. This is because whenever someone would think of the concept it was shot down by the college professors because it was too radical. The Chaos Theory really became popular when Edward Lorenz published a paper called Probability; Does the Flap of a Butterflys Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? Now because of this publication the sensitivity to initial conditions is popularly referred to by scientists as the Butterfly Effect (Andrews). Also before his publication the theory was starting to become popular. In 1977 the New York Academy of Science recorded the first symposium about the chaos theory. (Symposium means formal meeting). Then in 1978 Mitchell Firgenham connected the Chaos Theory with logistic maps and fractal geometry. After 1980 Chaos was starting to be discussed by major scientists around the Glibe. In 1986 the New York Academy of Science had another conference on how this theory could be connected to biology and medicine. One year later Pre Bak, Chao Tang, and Kurt Weisenfield published the first paper discussing how chaos could be applied to natural disasters like earthquakes and volcano eruptions. (Wikimany). Chaos has been applied to many other fields as well including fixing heart murmurs, satilites orbits, population growth and epilepsy. Also it is said that if you travel back in time that time itself might be chaotic. Even the process of you going back in time might change all of time itself. While doing this research paper I have learned many interesting things. Now I understand why Michael Criton made his book Jurassic Park be based on the Chaos Theory. In using this theory all he was trying to say was that it is impossible to control extinct beings brought back to life through complicated deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) reproduction.

No matter what precautions the people in the book will make there will always be something that will surprise them, and since they didnt think of it they were unprepared. Some complications they ran into were climate changes, atmospheric differences etc. Really looking into it its almost impossible to graph how the park could have failed. Just by looking at it you can tell its a complex system because nature itself is a very complex chaotic system with different things happening everywhere. Maybe later we will fully understand the Chaos Theory. For now, we can only speculate on how this new concept will change our understanding of the known world.

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