Fractals, Mandelbrot sets, the butterfly effect: Chaos at the Quasar Club

While most science relies on predictability, chaos stands alone. It describes situations that can't be predicted in a straightforward way - in a chaotic process, very similar conditions at the start can lead to vastly different final conditions.

These concepts have been aimed at applications as different as predictions of stockmarkets (see the movie "The Bank") and describing the output of lasers.

This Quasar Club activity featured an introduction to the science of chaos. Our members heard about chaos research at UQ Physics, and had the opportunity to interact with a number of chaotic systems. These include:

• simulations of chaos using the facilities of the Visualisation and Advanced Computation Laboratory, including
  • Mandelbrot Set Explorer
  • Lorenz Butterfly
  physics toys that display chaotic behaviour