What are the' domino' and' butterfly' effects?
The butterfly effect was put forward by meteorologist Lorenz in 1963.
The general idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings occasionally in the tropical rain forest of Amazon River basin in South America may cause a tornado in Texas in two weeks. The reason is that the movement of butterfly wings leads to the change of the air system around it and the generation of weak airflow, which in turn will cause the corresponding changes in the air around it or other systems, which will cause a chain reaction and eventually lead to great changes in other systems.
this effect shows that the result of the development of things is extremely sensitive to the initial conditions, and the smallest deviation of the initial conditions will cause great differences in the results.
The "butterfly effect" is used in sociology to explain that a bad tiny mechanism, if not guided and adjusted in time, will bring great harm to the society, which is called "tornado" or "storm"; A good tiny mechanism, as long as it is guided correctly, will have a sensational effect after a period of hard work, or be called "revolution".
detailed explanation:
nonlinear, commonly known as "butterfly effect".
what is the butterfly effect? Let's start with the discovery of Lorenz, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In order to forecast the weather, he used a computer to solve 13 equations simulating the earth's atmosphere, with the intention of improving the accuracy of long-term weather forecast by using high-speed operation of the computer. In an experiment in 1963, in order to examine the results more carefully, he took out an intermediate solution of .56, improved the accuracy to .56127 and sent it back. When he went to the cafe for a cup of coffee and came back to see it, he was surprised: there was a small difference, but the result was a hundred thousand miles away! After checking again, it is found that there is nothing wrong with the computer. Lorenz found that because the error will increase exponentially, in this case, a small error has caused great consequences as it goes on. He then identified this as "extreme instability to the initial value", that is, "chaos", also known as "butterfly effect". The flapping of Asian butterflies will make a tornado worse than the strong wind in America in a few months!
This discovery is so serious that scientists don't understand it, and several scientific magazines also refuse to publish his articles, thinking that it is "contrary to common sense": if similar initial values are substituted into certain equations, the results should be similar, so how can they be far away!
linearity refers to the proportional and linear relationship between quantities, which represents regular and smooth motion in space and time; However, nonlinearity refers to the non-proportional and non-linear relationship, which represents irregular movement and mutation. For example: How many times is the visual acuity of two eyes more than that of one eye? It's easy to think of twice, but it's actually 6-1 times! This is nonlinearity: 1+1 is not equal to 2.
laser generation is nonlinear! When the applied voltage is small, the laser is like an ordinary electric lamp, and the light scatters in all directions; When the applied voltage reaches a certain value, a new phenomenon will suddenly appear: the excited atoms seem to hear the command of "aligning to the right" and emit monochromatic light with the same phase and direction, that is, laser.
The characteristic of nonlinearity is that it cuts across all professions and permeates all fields, which can almost be said as "everywhere."
For example, there is chaos in celestial motion; The oscillation of electricity, light and sound waves will suddenly sink into chaos; The geomagnetic field changed direction 16 times in 4 million years, which is also due to chaos. Even human beings themselves are originally nonlinear: contrary to traditional thinking, the EEG and heartbeat of healthy people are not regular, but chaotic, and chaos is the expression of vitality. Chaotic systems respond to external stimuli faster than non-chaotic systems.
it can be seen that nonlinearity is around us and we can't hide it.
in December p>1979, Lorenz pointed out in a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might cause a tornado in Texas. His speech and conclusion left a deep impression on people. Since then, the so-called "butterfly effect" has spread like wildfire, and its reputation has spread far and wide.
The reason why the butterfly effect is fascinating, exciting and thought-provoking lies not only in its bold imagination and charming aesthetic color, but also in its profound scientific connotation and inherent philosophical charm.
Scientists define chaos as: Chaos refers to the seemingly random irregular motion in a deterministic system. A system described by deterministic theory is characterized by uncertainty, unrepeatable and unpredictable, which is the chaotic phenomenon. Further research shows that chaos is an inherent characteristic of nonlinear dynamic systems and a common phenomenon in nonlinear systems. Newton's deterministic theory can perfectly deal with most linear systems, and most linear systems are simplified from nonlinear systems. Therefore, chaos is ubiquitous in real life and practical engineering and technical problems. Lorenz discovered chaos for the first time. Up to now, the research on chaos has been concerned by scientists, sociologists and humanists. Studying chaos is actually to find order in disorder, but there are still too many unpredictable and chaotic things in today's world, and this topic will surely become a human problem. Here, due to the limited knowledge, we only made a superficial introduction and introduction, hoping that more students can walk into the door of chaos and look at the world with a deeper eye. Maybe we can devote ourselves to this research in the future.
in a word, chaotic laws can only be observed, pondered, intuited and speculated, but not revealed, deduced and accurately described. We can use a folk song circulating in the west to illustrate this image.
This ballad says:
Lost a nail and broke a shoe;
I broke a shoe and broke a war horse;
I broke a war horse and injured a knight;
wounded a knight and lost a battle;
lost a battle and lost an empire.
whether a nail on a horseshoe will be lost is a very small change in initial conditions, but its "long-term" effect is the fundamental difference between the existence and death of an empire. This is the so-called "butterfly effect" in the military and political fields.
it's a little incredible, but it can really cause such bad consequences. A wise leader must guard against procrastination, but seemingly trivial things may cause disintegration within the collective. Isn't it too late to regret at that time? A suspension bridge across a deep valley often starts with a small stone tied to a thin line.
domino effect
domino effect
Xinhua News Agency reported on December 31, 2 and CCTV reported on January 6, 21: In the last few minutes of the 2th century, a new Guinness World Record for Dominoes was born in the gymnasium and tennis hall of Beijing Summer Palace Sports Health City. Sixty-two young students from China, Japan and South Korea successfully knocked down more than 3.4 million dominoes, breaking the previous world record of 2.97 million by the Dutch. As can be seen from the TV screen, the scene of dominoes falling down in turn in an instant is spectacular, and the patterns displayed during it are rich and amazing, which contains certain scientific truth.
this is the "domino effect". The energy generated by this effect is enormous.
The physical reason of this effect is that when a domino stands upright, its center of gravity is higher, and when it falls down, its gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. When it falls on the second card, this kinetic energy is transferred to the second card, and the second card transfers the sum of kinetic energy transferred from the first card and kinetic energy converted from its own gravitational potential energy in the process of falling down to the third card ...
A. Whitehead, a physicist at the University of British Columbia, once made a set of dominoes, with ***13 pieces, the first one being the smallest. It is 9.53mm long, 4.76mm wide and 1.19mm thick, which is not as big as a small fingernail. In the future, each piece will be enlarged by 1.5 times. This data is selected according to the fact that a domino can knock down a domino with a volume of 1.5 times when it falls. The largest 13th piece is 61mm long, 3.5mm wide and 7.6mm thick, and its face size is close to that of playing cards, and its thickness is equivalent to 2 times that of playing cards. Gently pushing down the first card will inevitably spread to the 13th card. The energy released by the 13th domino when it falls is more than 2 billion times larger than that of the first card. Because the energy of domino effect increases exponentially. If it takes .24 microjoules to push down the first domino, the energy released by the fallen 13th domino will reach 51 joules. It can be seen that the energy generated by domino effect is really eye-catching.
However, A. Whitehead didn't make the 32nd domino after all, because it would be as high as 415m, twice as high as the Empire State Building in New York. If someone really made such a set of dominoes, the skyscraper would be knocked down with one finger!