Saturday Science Lecture with Michael Ogilvie on Chaos from order, order from chaos

Saturday Science Spring 2025: Complex Behavior from Simple Rules

Our daily lives are largely governed by a simple set of physical laws: the laws of gravity, put forth by Newton in 1687, and Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism, found by Maxwell in 1861. From these fundamental forces, a vast variety of patterns and strucutures arise: galaxies, rainbows, beehives and more. Much of this is emergent behavior: It’s hard to predict, but once you know it happens, you can look for what makes it happen. In this series of lectures, we will examine the interplay between the emergence of complexity and the reduction to simple laws of nature. Each lecture will begin at 10 AM in Crow 201, which is the physics building with the observatory on the roof. All lectures are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the underground East End Garage. Please note that this series will resume on March 29th, after WashU’s Spring Break. 

Chaos from order, order from chaos with Michael Ogilvie
In ancient pre-scientific traditions, chaos was the primordial state of the universe. In modern science, chaotic behavior is associated with apparently random behavior, and manifests in many important areas of our lives, such as   weather, air travel, and computer passwords. Very small changes can give rise to unpredictable results in the future, a behavior often called the butterfly effect. However, buried within what appears random are new physical laws which have made chaotic behavior an important field of study. We will explore the theory and applicacation of the theory of chaotic behavior, and what we may learn in the future.