Abstract

Professor Tom Mullin from Manchester University will help us look into:

The hidden order which lies beneath seemingly very complex systems.

The butterfly effect discovered by a weatherman shows that very tiny changes can have very large consequences. The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done.

So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does..

Is the tossing of a coin really random??

There are many systems which seem very complex but which can be very simply modelled.

See the beauty of Fractals and the Mandlebrot sets . These are patterrns which are indistinguishable no matter at what scale you look at them. Think of the coast from an aeroplane all the little bays ind inlets you can see -- Then walk on the beach at the edge of the coast and in a ten yard stretch you'll see lots of smaller inlets and so on round a small rock pool.

Mandlebrot an IBM man, analysed the price of cotton and graphed the changes. He found that the sequence of changes fragile beauty or a threat to Continents if plotted out on curves for daily price changes and monthly price changes matched perfectly. Incredibly, analyzed Mandelbrot's way, the degree of variation had remained constant over a tumultuous sixty-year period that saw two World Wars and a depression. So what's behind this seemingly random but fascinating regularity?

Come and find out about Great Attractors - no, not Tom Cruise!

The societies that we form in this world can no longer be viewed as if they were giant and very complicated machines that need a control structure of ever increasing complexity in order to be successfully managed. The secret of nature's most complex structures is in the simple techniques by which they are built and managed, combining a simple repetitive act with the strangely helpful chaos of unpredictability, in order to make their growth and evolution in this world successful.

Knutsford SciBAr consists of ordinary people who meet informally at a cafe/bar-over a beer or wine in Knutsford at 6:30pm on the first monday in the month. A leading scientist attends and talks for 30 minutes on his topic. A discussion between attendees and the scientist then follows usually till around 8:30pm.

The discussion then continues for days afterwards on line on the SciBAr discussion website http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kscibar until the topic is exhausted and others take over.

(The BA in SciBAr denotes the British Association for the Advancement of Science)

You don't have to join, You don't have to know any science, Just ring and then turn up with an enquiring mind.

NEW VENUE: The Cheshire Room -The Angel Hotel,King St, Knutsford, 6:30pm - 1st monday of the Month

Web site: www.knutsford-scibar.co.uk

For more information about this event and to register for it, please contact:

Dave Thompson, Telephone: 07768-355-814  Email: knutsford.scibar@ntlworld.com