To me chaos is more math than it is physics, though of course all matter follows the rules of mathematics. The point being that sometimes (like in turbulence) the world acts kind of crazy like, and when they try to figure out what is going on it turns out that the math, that staid science of accountants, is what is driving the crazy.
I liked that pool table where the guy moved one of the balls just a scooch and eventually the path of the cue ball was completely different. If you watch it carefully, the paths are the same until the moved ball gets in on the action when it is hit by another ball and even then nothing changes until those balls hit other balls and eventually one of them hits the cue ball.
After the video ended I noticed that there was a part two, and that are actually nine of them. Along the way I noticed this other video being suggested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk
This one lacks the fancy, but sometimes distracting, graphics of the first series but it begins with an exploration of the math behind the changing populations of rabbits which is not unlike that of deer. This is the part of chaos theory that fascinates me, how the line splits in two, then four, then eight and on and then goes to chaos, but then a little further down the x axis it goes back to being a single line again, then splits and begins to alternate between chaos and order in a wacky pattern.
When I came back from Texas to my parents' attic, and I had no job and no money and no friends, I did have my PC Jr and I wrote up a program in BASIC to duplicate that graph and everytime I saw that ascending line break into two then four etc it felt like the finger of god chucking me under the chin.
Anyway while I was looking at these videos, I came across this other one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=094y1Z2wpJg
Has nothing to do with chaos, but fascinating.
Old Dog is a fan of youtube as are many of my friends, but I never liked videos because in a book when you get confused you can always go back a few pages and reread to make things clear. But in youtube you can do that by just clicking on the line. I think I may be dipping down that rabbit hole more often in the future.
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