What does chaos look like

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Essential Meaning of chaos. The country had descended into economic chaos. Full Definition of chaos. Examples of chaos in a Sentence The loss of electricity caused chaos throughout the city.

When the police arrived, the street was in total chaos. First Known Use of chaos 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 3. History and Etymology for chaos Latin, from Greek — more at gum. Learn More About chaos. Time Traveler for chaos The first known use of chaos was in the 15th century See more words from the same century.

From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. In one version, two people bump into each other in a train station; but in the other, the train arrives 10 seconds earlier and the meeting never happens. From then on, the two plot lines might be totally different. And that compounding is what leads to chaos. Nothing could be more predictable than the swinging pendulum of a grandfather clock. But if you separate a pendulum halfway down by adding another axle, the swinging becomes wildly unpredictable.

As a complex systems scientist , I think a lot about what is random. But what about the weather two weeks from now? Or a year from now? Chaos is somewhere between random and predictable. A group of helium balloons that launch together will eventually land in drastically different places.

Mixing is thorough because turbulence occurs at all scales. It is also nonlinear: fluids cannot be unmixed. Feedback: Systems often become chaotic when there is feedback present. A good example is the behavior of the stock market. As the value of a stock rises or falls, people are inclined to buy or sell that stock. This in turn further affects the price of the stock, causing it to rise or fall chaotically.

Fractals : A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems — the pictures of Chaos.