What’s so confusing about Chaos?

A foray into lighting an eternal, learning flame.

Ali KorosyForeign Languages

407-823-3428 akorosy@mail.ucf.edu

--from Einstein

“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

What’s the outcome?

It’s a long way to Barcelona What’s your Christmas list? What’s my Christmas list?

Communication Teamwork Critical Thinking The piéce de resistance – passion

Using the Self-Organizing Classroom for Real Learning

Open-ended instructions with a CLEAR GOAL IN MIND. Airline ticket, open-ended, $$ is not an object. Must eat in one restaurant at each stop (avoid

McDonald’s and Burger King) Must speak with one inhabitant at each stop. Students must arrive in a predetermined

restaurant in Barcelona by noon, seven days from now.

Eating in Barcelona

Periodic vs. Aperiodic A periodic system uniformly repeats its

previous pattern at predictable, repetitive intervals. A fulcrum

An aperiodic system occurs when the variables in the system do not exactly repeat themselves. Water down a drain

The Butterfly Effect

Ray Bradbury Edward Lorenz lazy ways or .506 instead of .506127 Caltech demo It was Brazil and Texas!

Where’s Charley going?

An unstable, aperiodic system does not repeat itself and is affected by any small perturbation. Weather (Edward Lorenz) History

The butterfly and the tornado.

Distinguishing characteristic of all Chaotic systems

A minute change in the feedback of the system can and does produce drastically divergent results.

Lorenz’s weather model 12 variables The results of .506 and .506127

or

when a butterfly flaps its wings

More thoughts on Chaos in the classroom

Students as fractals Students as self-organizing systems Students as unstable aperiodic systems Students as unguided missiles

--from Eudora Welty

My continuing passion is to part a curtain,

That invisible shadow that falls between people,

The veil of indifference to each other’s presence,

Each other’s wonder,

Each other’s human plight.

A couple of references:

Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. Doubleday, New York. 2002.

Wheatley, Margaret. Leadership and the New Sciences: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Berrett-Keller Publishers, San Francisco. 1999.

Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Phyics. HarperCollins, New York. 2001.

Chaos: A pictorial introduction. http://johnbanks.maths.latrobe.edu.au/chaos/

Chaos and Complexity Theory. http://complexity.orcon.net.nz/