A bicycle is a machine and will fall in fairly predictable ways, especially when there are no other factors involved, as there usually are in the real world. Like a person flailing in the seat, a parking block on the ground in front of it, traffic in the street, etc. Guardrail, uphill or downhill grade, a big pothole. Any of those would significantly change the pattern. But if you just push the bike the same way over and over on flat ground with nothing else to affect the way it falls, it's not too different from taping a pen on the end of a pendulum, or the design made by a spirograph machine. The big wheels and the geometry of the bike frame will cause it to react within certain parameters every time—the parameters graphed in that design. Tightly controlled parameters like the ones in that experiment will give data, and eventually that data adds up to something useful, but that particular experiment by itself tells us almost nothing about a real-world bike crash. I've experienced enough of those to know, it's a lot more chaotic than that graph!
Yes, in the real world there are a lot of variables affecting the outcome, which contributes to chaotic behaviour. Chaos Theory states that one small change in the initial conditions can lead to very large differences in a later state. (It's often applied to weather.) This is called the butterfly effect and is demonstrated by the animation at the link below which shows the chaotic behaviour of three double rod pendulums.
No matter how many times Ian Malcom explained it to me, I was never 100% on how to sum it up... something something mapping fractals to demonstrate emergent patterns in seemingly random systems.
No, it's a water drop rolling down the back of your hand, and the little hairs can mess it all up and stuff. Or butterflies in China flapping their wings and making a tornado in Topeka or something. Simple!!
Fractals are the pictures of chaos. And a tree a good representation of this repetition of a simple process over and over again in an ongoing feedback loop
A deterministic viewpoint would expect that the same initial conditions would always produce the same outcome, i.e. one possible path. That there is a variety of paths taken by the bicycles implies chaos at work. What is interesting is the pattern that the various paths produce. Order from chaos.
The logical conclusion, according to chaos theory, is that the initial conditions were not all exactly identical. Maybe the bike was leaning a little to the left, or a little to the right, or the push was a little stronger or lighter. Chaos theory: Small differences in initial conditions produce big differences in outcomes.
Chaos theory is important to stories. Wherever a minor occurrence leads to massive changes in the MC's trajectory. Wherever small perturbances lead to chaos. Wherever a character has to decide between options. Wherever uncertainty weighs. Wherever there are interruptions, disturbances, unpredictability or turbulence. A good novel has many parts that are in constant action and interaction. Within this complexity, order is found within the chaos. Or does chaos arise from the order? Guess it depends on the story.
Escape by Sally A Bayan The heavy downpour took longer, easily, it spread all over, the weight of water, drenched the ground, the plants.....it doused the body and silenced the mind. I stared at the gloomy, grayed horizon...while rain poured without end. the water level rose...and swelled, all active and dormant fears lost their tethers and darkened the floodwaters. It seemed, the sky really needed to cry. and here we are, humans, twisted...tangled up in the chaos of a grieving universe. With just thin raincoats and light scarves as shields, how do we escape the aftermath of life's heavy downpours? For lots of reasons, the sky disencumbers...and cries.
Dancing is good for you. It improves cognitive function, mood, heart, lungs, muscles, endurance, flexibility, agility, coordination and balance. We are made to move. If you are feeling like getting out of the chair and having a little bit of emotional release, turn up the volume and boogie.
It is. I danced/taught dance for over forty years, and loved every minute. That being said, it can also result in arthritis, broken bones, various strains and sprains, deformed joints, and unwelcome advances from certain members of the public. Nobody know da trubble I seen...
Happy Autumn everyone! Perfect hiking weather. Summer ends and autumn begins in the northern hemisphere at 9:04 p.m. tonight.
Just reflecting on the human ingenuity and scientific and engineering talent it takes to turn this: into this:
What I am wondering is when are they going to start mass-producing paper from discarded clothing instead of forests? With the advent of "fast fashion" (cheap, nearly-disposable clothing) the number of articles of clothing purchased each year per person has skyrocketed in the last decades. And clothing is not kept as long as it used to be. People buy more, and often discard it after a few wears. What to do with all this disposable clothing? Recycle it into paper. There's money to be made. The process isn't new. Below is an extract from an article published in Chem. Eng. News in 1955: Growing interest is being expressed in the use of synthetic fibers in the manufacture of paper. The unusual properties of nylon polyamide fiber, Orion acrylic fiber, and Dacron polyester fiber, for example, indicate that these materials might be of considerable value in papermaking ... Synthetic fibers have shown outstanding resistance to corrosive chemicals, molds, bacteria, sunlight, heat, and moisture. They also have high strength, ilex endurance, and abrasion resistance. Papers made from nylon, Dacron, and Orion are three to 10 times stronger than pulp or rag papers. Their high strength may make them especially useful in heavy-duty bags.
My guess is that it's similar to other such questions about recycling - it isn't cost effective. As we discussed in another thread, economic trends in the 1950s don't always translate to 2022. You'd have to set up a whole infrastructure to collect the rags and move them where you needed them for processing. Could be done, I guess, but some companies would have to take the initial investment hit.
I just bought some jeans recently and couldn't hlelp but think back to how thick and hefty they used to be in the 70's. Now they're super thin and lightweight. It's cool that they have a little stretch now, makes them fit a lot better, but I mean, I used to not have to worry about thorns or snakebite in the good old days (from the waist down anyway), it was like wearing armor. And a pair of jeans would last years. Now you're lucky if they last a few months. Seems that's they way everything is going though, including electronics and everything else. Planned obsolescence.
And I guess it'll always be that way, as long as people are willing to wait in lines overnight to order the latest iPhone, especially when there's nothing wrong with the one they have.
It blows my mind that such a complex behaviour can result from instinct. Swedish biologist Lars Wilsson raised a number of beavers from infancy, completely isolated from adult beavers. He found that these young beavers - who had never seen a beaver dam - were able to build almost perfect dams at the first opportunity. The sound of running water was the cue.
That's always fascinated me, too, especially about the herding instinct of Border Collies, or even the fact that all dogs seem to know how, and love to play, fetch. I've never seen an explanation of how something like that can be passed on through genes, though.
