CLINT SPROTT

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STRANGE ATTRACTORS

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CLINT SPROTT, otherwise known as J.C. Sprott, is the distinguished physicist who wrote the book Strange Attractors: Creating Patterns in Chaos.

As a Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, in 1984, he created a road show called Wonders of Physics, and still occasionally goes on the road to appear in it himself.

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IN A CHAOTIC SYSTEM, the path followed by the motion is usually drawn into a small region of space, where it moves in an infinitesimally small region called a strange attractor.

It is strange because its structure is fractal, with endlessly repeating detail at all size scales. And just as a lake attracts water from its watershed, this object attracts orbits from its basin of attraction.

Strange attractors reveal the geometry of chaos. They appeal to our sense of beauty as they remind us of natural shapes like clouds, whose behavior is chaotic.

Chaos can be defined as unpredictable behavior within a system governed by laws of nature — variety within structure.

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