can anyone explain me the butterfly effect?
In: Physics
Think of a Roulette wheel. You can try duplicating the exact spin of the wheel and launch of the ball by hand but you’d never be able to achieve the same result.
This is because little changes propagate and become bigger and bigger differences in any complex system. The smallest degree difference, the slightest difference in timing, the slightest extra torque in the spin will guarantee a different result.
So you have predictable Newtonian physics where if you knew the location and momentum of every atom you could predict the result. However Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says that we cannot determine both the position and momentum of a specific particle accurately – therefore it impossible for us to accurately predict the exact interactions of molecules.
And so Newtonian Physics when combined with Quantum Mechanics gives us Chaos Theory.
So a butterfly flaps it’s wings – the air molecules being moved interact and cause other air molecules to move that can chain effect other molecules and where the beginnings of a breeze were about to go in one direction now it goes in a slightly different direction. That breeze combines into other airflows and combines into effecting bigger and bigger movements of air. Now conditions might have been hovering on developing a hurricane out in ocean. A slightly different wind could now trigger the hurricane to occur where it may have dissipated before. The idea is if the butterfly hadn’t flapped it’s wings the seemly random events of the wind and weather would have turned out differently.
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