Dan Seitz

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Water pours in from the top at a steady rate. If the flow of water in the waterwheel is slow, the top bucket never fills up enough to overcome friction, and the wheel never starts turning. (Similarly, in a fluid, if the heat is too low to overcome viscosity, it will not set the fluid in motion.) If the flow is faster, the weight of the top bucket sets the wheel in motion (left). The waterwheel can settle into a rotation that continues at a steady rate (center). But if the flow is faster still (right), the spin can become chaotic, because of nonlinear effects built into the system. As buckets ...more
Chaos: Making a New Science
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