The butterfly effect

One day, i was speaking with a friend while we were watching a kids playing a football match seated from the stairs, in a side of the field a girl was walking. One of the players kicked so hard the ball that almost hit the girl. When we saw the scene, me and my friend got impressed, then he told me that if the girl should walked slower, the ball would hit her. When i heard that comentary, i remenber something very interesting: The butterfly effect. I told him if he know something about it and he answer me no, so, i told him that the effect consists about that a little and insignificant action can change a lot the original results of someting. After that, the conversation theme changed, and we start to imagine hypothetical situations where the story change completely by changing part of itself by little ways.

Since that day, i'm fascinated with the butterfly effect and i want to share it with you.

What the butterfly effect is?

Probably you may heard that if a butterfly flutters in Mexico, there will be a tornado in the other side of the planet. Obviusly, this is fake. If that would be real, considering all the butterflys in the world, Our home would be already destroyed.

The butterfly effect talks about little changes in a system or a circumstance that can induce very different results if that change is never given.

let's take a simple example: Imagine that you have a hard and complicated math exercise and you must resolve it. When you finish, it gives you a “X” result. Now, you do the same hard and complicated exercise again but with the difference that you change just one number of the problem. You will see that the final result with the development is totally difference of the first one. That is the Butterfly effect, Two situations with the same comditions, but there's a little change in the first one, making a different development between the two situations.

Origin

Now, we have an idea about the butterfly effect, but we have to know the origin of it.

The mathematical and meteorologist Edward Lorenz was trying to calculate by equations, climatological patterns with a computer. Edward realized that the computer gave him a results very differents to those who already had.Why? Because the computer made a rounding.

He wrote in the parameter six decimals, but the printer just accepted three, so he wrote three and he went to serve himself a cup of coffee. When he return to see his work, he got surprised to see in the printer differents results just for three decimals. And that's it how the butterfly effect was crated.

The chaos theory

We can't talk about the butterfly effect without speak of the chaos theory, beacause they're too conected.

What the chaos theory is?

Everybody know that traditional science explain the predictable and linear phenomenon, those, where we know their results by a simple equation, like a chemical reaction or the movement of an object. In the other hand, the chaos theory is a branch of mathematics which explain the unpredictable and no- linear phenomenon. There is a lot of system of this type that we are exposed daily, like our mood or a football match before it start.

The speed of an object in freefall is totally predictable by a simple equation: Gravity X Time.

The moods of the people are an example of the non linear, because we can't know by an equation how you will be tomorrow emotionally.

The scientists of the Lorenz's time thought that, making little changes in a system, the final results would be little too. Thanks to that wasn't real, the chaos theory got created.

Every action and decision are connected, and the interrelation possibilities are unpredictable. that is to say, every minimal intervention in any system can create a unpredictable totally chaos.