3 ms·
> The faucet isn’t exactly isolated as a chaotic component. As it is, it seems to sputter and flow in a highly chaotic way already, never mind what is under it.
by Maursault 5y ago
> The faucet isn’t exactly isolated as a chaotic component. As it is, it seems to sputter and flow in a highly chaotic way already, never mind what is under it.
If true, what is the significance of your observation? IOW, so what? Are you suggesting the water wheel motion is only chaotic because the water flow is? And further, do you mean to say the water wheel's motion is not actually chaotic because the water flow is chaotic? Your comment seems perceptive, but I am failing to grasp your point. Thanks.
- gorgoiler 5y agoNo slur on the experiment, but the presentation is surprising, that’s all. The wheel seems to be clearly erratic, but the erratic faucet is distracting. Would love to see the wheel behave crazily even with the most uniformly boring and consistent inputs.
- Maursault 5y agoMy suspicion is fluid dynamics is fundamentally chaotic, but that even with a steady, even and predictable flow, if even possible, the motion of the wheel would still be chaotic and that there is little relation between the chaos of the fluid and the chaos of the wheel movement. That's just what I think, so, take with a grain of salt, I honestly do not know. btw, chaotic does not mean erratic nor does it mean random, but instead Chaos Theory states that within apparent randomness of a complex system there are underlying mathematical patterns driven by a perpetuating feedback and resulting in a self-similarity transcending scale, as well as self-organization (fractals), and that deterministic non-linear systems are subject to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions (aka butterfly effect). I also think this is not really an experiment but merely a physical demonstration of Chaos Theory.