What is chaos theory and the butterfly effect?
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The butterfly effect is an example of the chaos theory at work.  Simply put (overly simply) chaos theory states that all things interact together in a chaotic but predictable way if we could understand and map every detail of everything involved. The butterfly effect is an example of this.\n\nThe Butterfly effect is a theory that states a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa could be the reason it rains in Chicago 3 days later.  Basically, if we could map how the air molocules move from the butterflies wings, and how they move other molocules and so on, it would eventually have billions and billions of molocules moving as a result of 1 butterfly cuasing currently unpredicitable effects all of the earth or universe for that matter.
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There have not been many direct applications of chaos theory so far, but the study of chaos and the emphasis on understanding chaos has given us new methods of research.\n\nOne of the best examples I can think of is agent-based modelling in social sciences. For example, in theoretical combat, there is an old equation called Lanchester's equation of combat, which predicts the casualty rate in a given time period for two different armies o fgiven sizes with given accuracies.  Unfortunately, it tends not to be terribly accurate in numerical forescasts of battle outcomes.  This is because the battle outcome depnds on the behavior of individual troops on the battlefield, and small changes in their behavior can cause big changes in battle outcome.\n\nThe idea that small changes in an input cause big changes in an output is the essence of chaos theory.  This has led to agent based modelling in which researchers assign behavioral attributes to individual troops rather than use a single variable to define a whole army. The computer calculates each troops interation with his own troops and with the enemy's, and you get an outcome.  Small changes in troop behavior will cause large changes in outcome.  This can tell researchers what behaviors of soldiers may be most important to modify even slghtly.\n\nObservations of very different outcomes from small changes in starting conditions have led reserachers in all sorts of other fields to also attempt to understand this difference.  Chemical engineers are often trying to understand tubulence and how small changes in pipe shapes can casue big changes in the way fluid flows.
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All phenomena are based on energy transfer in some form.\n\nPhysics is the study of energy transfer.\n\nJules is correct about math being the fundamental structure of physics.
500484
Now you have me thinking of the prayer ...\n\n"Our chaos theory which art in an post big bang expanding universe hallowed be thy data ... "\n\nNah, it will never catch on :-)
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Maybe you will find this article useful. It explains the concept of information entropy.
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It's kind of a backwards response to your question, but here's a story about creating music using chaos theory:\nhttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n26-27_v146/ai_16280947\n\nAnd a study explaining how music theory works to explain metaphor in science:\nhttp://www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/baake/baakeharmonics.htm
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the first link explains system boundary and the second is an explanation of computer simulations in the context of "conceptualizing a system".  hope this helps
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That would have to be _MATH_ \ni.e. "Calculus, Vector calculus,Chaos Theory, or Differential equations" Just writing this down makes my head spin!
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to get baffled see this...\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
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Sure.  The 'Butterfly Effect'.  Research the chaos theory.  Amazing stuff.
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Solve your homework? Heh... I recommend Wikipedia to help you learn about entropy and ectropy. If they are not helpful to you, I'm sure there are some useful links (see the reference part).
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Human organism and society are highly ordered systems with only a limited capacity of self-repair. By destroying part of that order, "raw chaos" may target key structures which make the entire order work or fail.
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Look up convergence theory on www.colorado.edu/communication/met.  It will explain this theory in fairly simple terms.
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In a nutshell.. the butterfly effect proposes that the flap of a butterfly's wing in one part of the world say for examle the unitedstates, could cause a tornado to occur in another part of the world for example Europe. So one extremely small event could cause something majorly catastrophic to happen. I believe this was first discovered with sizemographs and earthquake patterns. It's not a fact, just theory, but there is a lot to support it. So chaos theory basically says that any organized system is prone to collapse or fall apart because chaos will eventually be introduced into it. Like in the movie Jurassic park there was a scientist played by Jeff Goldblume who was constantly trying to convince the owner of the island that eventually all the dinosaurs would escape or something bad would happen because of chaos. He was all into chaos theory.. and lo and behold he was right. Ofcourse that's just a movie, but chaos theory applies much to real life.
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people try to apply chaos theory to social sciences, but so far no great revlations have been succesful
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The Brown University pattern theory group is working with the belief that the world is complex, and to understand it, or a part of it, requires realistic representations of knowledge about it. We create such representations using a mathematical formalism, pattern theory, that is compositional in that the representations are built from simple primitives, combined into (often) complicated structures according to rules that can be deterministic or random. This is similar to the formation of molecules from atoms connected by various forms of bonds. \n\nPattern theory is transformational in that groups or semigroups of transformations operate on the primitives. These transformations express the invariances of the worlds we are looking at. \n\nPattern theory is variational in that it describes the variability of the phenomena observed in different applications in terms of probability measures that are used with a Bayesian interpretation. This leads to inferences that will be realized by computer algorithms. Our aim is to realize them through codes that can be executed on currently available hardware.
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This could very well be an application of chaos theory (the predictability of random events).  Although as the cables generally find themselves getting messed up, I think this is better described as an application of Murphy's Law.\n\nMurphy's Law, stated mathematically, is "1 plus 1 hardly ever equals 2", or in simpler terms, "If anything can screw up, it will screw up".  This law affects everything from household cables to the antennae of interplanetary probes (as the Galileo team found out when the probe's hi-gain antenna refused to deploy after launch, despite careful design and planning).