CHAOS | Chaos

A MATHEMATICAL ADVENTURE

Henri Poincaré
(1854-1912)

Pierre-Simon Laplace
(1749-1827)

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From Jos Leys, Étienne Ghys and Aurélien Alvarez, the makers of Dimensions, comes CHAOS, a math movie with nine 13-minute chapters. It is a film about dynamical systems, the butterfly effect and chaos theory, intended for a wide audience. CHAOS is available in a large choice of languages and subtitles.

Chaos I : Panta Rhei

Can science help predict the future? Scientific thought has been dominated by determinism, as formulated by Laplace, for a very long time.
Chaos II : The lego race

Newton invented differential and integral calculus, a crystal ball that is incredibly efficient for predicting the future.
Chaos III : The apple and the Moon

Why does an apple fall from the apple tree and why does the Moon not fall on the Earth? This was Newton’s question at age 17.
Chaos IV : The swing

Science was dominated for a long time by the idea that motion always stabilizes, either by stopping all together, or by oscillating periodically.
Chaos V : Duhem’s bull

Here is an old dream : understanding the motion of celestial objects and predicting one’s own fate...
Chaos VI : Smale in Copacabana

The horseshoe: a classic example of a dynamical system that attempts to reduce chaos to its most elementary form.
Chaos VII : The butterfly effect

Predictability : does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? This was the title of a lecture by Edward Lorenz in 1972.
Chaos VIII : Lorenz’ mill

Faced with the problem of sensitivity to initial conditions, Lorenz proposes a statistical approach.
Chaos IX : Research today

Guided by Palis’ conjectures, mathematicians try to gain a general understanding of vector fields.

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