Strange Attractors & Butterflys
This page on the American Mathemtical Society's website has some stunningly beautiful images of aspects of chaos theory such as strange attractors. It has some advanced maths as well but unless you are into calculus in 3-space you will most likely want to skip that.
Chaos theory has much relevance to real life. The weather for example. There are mathematical equations involved where one slight difference now can become amplified to a very major difference in a few days ahead. This is the much quoted butterfly effect- that a butterfly flapping it's wings can lead to a thunderstorm halfway round the globe. (A few days later- not straight away!).
The page goes on to show the relevance of this to the topology of knots and has some great knot pictures - I particularly like the 'Non-Alternating 12.725'.
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Posted: November 16th, 2006 under default.
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