Week Seven - Chaos Theory

• “Ordered chaos” – does this sound familiar?
• When I think of "ordered chaos" I am reminded of the time I rode my bike through a busy intersection in Hanoi, Vietnam.  There were seemingly hundreds of motorbikes breezing past me, coming from all sort of directions.  When I hesitated, afraid I would crash into someone or something, I inadvertently disrupted the chaotic flow and almost caused a crash!  It wasn't until I surrendered with trust, focused only on my path that I managed to make my way through unharmed.  Eventually I found my rhythm with the chaos.

• Fractals as patterns of complex systems
• Thinking about fractals brought up my curiosity about snowflakes and how much they are based on fractal geometry.  Snowflakes are formed from falling through highly humid cold air.  The formation process of snowflakes aren't exactly fractal based and the structure themselves aren't perfectly symmetrical.  What is interesting is that fractals can closely approximate real snowflakes, like 95%-99% close!  This relationship is very interesting yet unknown as to why there is such a similarity.

• Consciousness out of chaos?
• What I discovered through my experience biking in Hanoi was that surrendering to the chaos was much less disruptive that going against it or moving with hesitation and doubt.  Perhaps that is part of spiritual awareness that we can discover from chaos theory.  Somethings although undesired are bound to happen.  Although it is unpleasant to think of forest fires as a necessary outcome in order to allow for more space for growth. 

• Conduct one of these "cool experiments" and write up your conclusions in your blog
• I performed the "rubber pencil" experiment and was underwhelmed unfortunately.  There was suppose to be a strobe light effect cause the pencil to look curved versus straight.  I did see a slight curve but it wasn't as obvious when done in front of a desktop monitor.