A Home Experiment to Demonstrate Chaos

Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Sun, 07 Nov 1999 21:27:30 -0500

>From the AMATEUR SCIENTIST column of the latest issue
of "Scientific American" -- "Falling into Chaos".

Some of you might like to actually observe the transition of a system from a predictable (ordered) to a chaotic state. This simple apparatus ingeniously retards the state-transi- tion so it is readily observable. The experiment is so easy to perform that your children (with your supervision) can learn some avant-garde physics, and the colored water droplets descending through mineral oil provide a lovely slow-motion study of the phenomenon.

You can buy the November 1999 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN at your newsstand (which would be nice), or avoid the cost by following this URL:

http://www.sciam.com/1999/1199issue/1199amsci.html

Bob



Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA