Butterfly Effect... I think....

[kermit911]

Hello everyone, again. I think this is called the butterfly effect but when I research it, it is not what I am looking for. I am trying to find a short video or something to explain this. Say you go back in time (Possible or Not) and you step on a butterfly. In turn that butterfly never pollinated the flower, that fed the rabbit, that kept the mother of leonardo da vinci from starving to death, so on and so on...

What is this called?
and
Anyone know where I could find a short video explaining this?

Thanks everyone
Dave

[jno]

that's a short story by Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder. The usual idea of the butterfly effect is the flap of a butterfly's wing in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas and is to do with chaos theory. Wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.o..._concept_and_the_term

There's a neat demonstration of it at the start of the movie City of Lost Children. I don't know of any educational videos though.

[jno]

try this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfD1OsP-Bv8

[society]

Not helpful but I couldn't help myself. ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Rngy90Q14

[Azalian]

Try googling "The grandfather paradox" Might help.

[jake-the-peg]

Your confusion is s common one.

The Butterfly effect comes from the study of what is called non-linear dynamics or more commonly chaos theory.

This shows how large events can be changed by infinitely small ones. Tiny perturbations can trigger large events. The famous example was given that the flap of a butterfly's wings in brazil causes a tornado in Texas.

You'll have seen all this in Wikipedia I'm sure.

Now the complication is that Ray Bradbury had earlier written a story called "the sound of thunder" in which a time traveller changes the present by destroying a butterfly in the past.

Now in a sense this is still an illustration of the butterfly effect but on a broarder sense. Almost a metaphorical one

Normally the butterfly effect relates to a physical system - like an atmosphere or a set or planets orbiting a star or even a double pendulum

Check this out

http://www.youtube.co...Tut6A&feature=related

You can never get such a device to behave exactly the same way twice because of this effect.

The sense of the butterfly effect you are talking about regards all of the planet as a single interrelated system where a small change affects everything.

Hope that helps more than confuses