CAOS

In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under specific conditions exhibit dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random, because of an exponential growth of errors in the initial conditions. This happens even though these systems are deterministic in the sense that their future dynamics are well defined by their initial conditions, and there are no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behavior has been observed in the laboratory in a variety of systems including electrical circuits, lasers, oscillating chemical reactions, fluid dynamics, and mechanical and magneto-mechanical devices. Observations of chaotic behaviour in nature include the dynamics of satellites in the solar system, the time evolution of the magnetic field of celestial bodies, population growth in ecology, the dynamics of the action potentials in neurons, and molecular vibrations. Everyday examples of chaotic systems include weather and climate.^[1] There is some controversy over the existence of chaotic dynamics in the plate tectonics and in economics.^{[2] [3] [4]}

Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder. (See the article on mythological chaos for a discussion of the origin of the word in mythology, and other uses.) A related field of physics called quantum chaos theory studies systems that follow the laws of quantum mechanics. Recently, another field, called relativistic chaos^[5], has emerged to describe systems that follow the laws of general relativity.

As well as being orderly in the sense of being deterministic, chaotic systems usually have well defined statistics. For example, the Lorenz system pictured is chaotic, but has a clearly defined structure.

Apesar de estar em inglês, um livro fenomenal de James Gleick fornece-nos uma visão completamente diferente do mundo depois de darmos mais atenção a esta nova teoria tanto física como matemática. Nos próprios manuais de matemática do 11º Ano é dada uma especial atenção, apesar de não fazer parte do currículo!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory