Chaos and Order

Friday night, my wife and I attended a fascinating lecture at the University of Texas. Professor Harry Swinney, who runs the Center for Non-linear Dynamics at UT, gave a talk about the emergence of order out of chaos.

The theory is fascinating, and you may have seen some examples of this before (at a minimum, it attempts to explain how a zebra gets its stripes) such as fluid within a spinning cylinder. The fact is that in highly chaotic systems, such as a glass of liquid that is vibrated and/or heated, the turbulence that results - at just the right level of input energy - can turn from a blur of chaotic flows into a well defined pattern, such as stripes or grids.

The one example he showed that got the entire room gasping was a video of what happens to corn starch in such a scenario...I strongly recommend you watch this one (make sure you see the last part, right out of a horror movie *laugh*)! This is also a good version of the video, with an overview by the physicists.