: What is the butterfly effect?
In: Mathematics
In a chaotic system tiny differences can grow exponentially over time.
Since wheather is such a system (and basically any flow of liguids or gasses can be) the tiny detail like a butterfly flapping it’s wings **can** dramatically change the outcome.
If you look at the phase-space of the system it happens to be a fractal, wich means certain regions have infinitely high sensitivity.
Another such system is a magnetic pendulum. Place an iron ball on a string over 3 magnets and try to predict over wich magnet the pendulum stops after you released it in some point. If you paint that in 3 colours you will receive this amazing [pattern](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/MagneticPendulum.jpg/1280px-MagneticPendulum.jpg)
The butterfly needs to be in one of those regions of extremely fine switching to change the wheather on the other end of the world from friendly to hurricane.
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