The Butterfly Effect With Cylindrical Mirrors And a Laser 

The wildest thing about chaos theory is even the microscopic smudges on the mirrors caused by your fingers when you made them would also be a variable that causes a significant change later on because it affects the reflection/diffraction of the laser. This would be in addition to the variable change in the angle. That’s chaos for you

you always find the coolest ways to demonstrate things

You should definently try this experiment with adding one of those Lego multiple gear machines (that do full spin in 100 years) to slightly change direction of laser

"I've some flexible mirrors and some toilet paper rolls" I've never been so excited about science 😄😁

Because the beam has width, wouldn’t using mirrors with a larger diameter reduce the resulting 360* result? Giving you a closer result to the computer simulation.

Next time use a smoke machine for the laser path, great video!

Thanks for trying the experiment irl. Have you tried using fewer cylinders, maybe 3 or 4? It might give a more localized spot.

You should use Fog so that we can see the whole path of the laser

I've been subscribed to Nils Berglund for several months; it's crazy to see a crossover like this since Nils's channel isn't huge or anything

You could repeat the experiment angling the light source upwards slightly, and then each strata of height would represent the distance travelled before finally emerging from the mirror maze. You can see this effect in your video, but it could be made more pronounced.

Why can't butterflies just mind their own business and quit effecting things

"All simulations carried out simultaneously." That sounds similar to the idea of a quantum computer.

Old TheActionLab: Haha cool science thing!! Modern TheActionLab: I am going to cause a tornado across the world...

You should have made the cylinders with a much wider radius to reduce the spreading at each hit & used different color/width lasers.

What's very interesting are the bright streaks in a few places. Those would represent the input angles for which the exiting beam only moves slowly.

Hey @the action lab! I have a question. Is it possible to dry a wet cloth in a vacuum? When the pressure decreases, then the boiling temp. Of the water will also decrease right? So will the water in the cloth get evaporated in a vacuum? Can I use the vacuum chamber to dry my clothes instantly? Also, would you mind making a video on it? :P

There’s got to be a way to use this as a premise for a functioning cloaking device, like from Star Trek. Somebody needs to figure out mathematically how to arrange the cylinders in order to maintain the effect while having a large open space in the middle.

Brilliant as ever…if you point the laser down at a slight angle then you should get a series of horizontal bands. Each band would be indicative of the number of reflections. This would separate much of the dispersion we saw on this video. I’d love to see if it works!

I'm 52 and I enjoy every video you make. Thank you for what you do. I learn a lot.

5:52 is such a good visual demonstration of what you were just explaining about the width of the laser causing the 360° spread effect.

So you could also see someone behind those cylindrical mirrors even if you don't directly see them.

This is cool to see and would’ve been really awesome with a mist of some sort to see the path of the beam viewed from directly overhead.

This would be fun to do with artificial fog as your “screen” instead of your white panel. This would hopefully enable to get a clear view of the reflections from a zenith viewpoint and give you more options for the light source position.

In effect the simulation was correct, just not accurate to reality, irony: the butterfly effect effected the real life experiment, as in there was an unexpected result, very nice

See, this is why even if time travelling was possible, the butterfly effect wouldn't allow you to change the timeline into a desired one. Even one single particle you interact with would change everything.

Amazing illustrations of the butterfly effect!

Angle: Changes 🤏 much Laser beam: Haha go brrrrrrrrrr

these just keep getting better and better

I thought this guy was just some dope at first. His voice sounds like he's not serious and just doing random things as a joke. But now I see he's the real deal and his passion for science is amazing. It turns out he has a PhD is science or something. I hope he ends up being remembered as a real inspirational educator like the Curriosity Show men and not forgotten as just another RU-vid content creator.

the experiment needs a non returning source ,maybe shooting small BB' s out of a gun and seeing where the pellet bounces off and hits the exterior wall would be better

That pendulum experiment really astonishing

Finally, a use for buying all that bog roll in lockdown.

*With enough information EVERYTHING could be predicted* *If you think about it, everything is predetermined since the big bang*

The fact that you utilize so many different aspects of science in your experiment / videos is remarkable to say the least thank you for this content so much as I feel it will be a standard and Future science teachings in my mind!

This and insanely slow Lego gearing videos would be a perfect marriage.

Ahh so this is like that pathfinding in **insert game with NPCs**

Could it measure the gravitational effect of lets say my hand if the lasse was actually my hand ? (gravitation bending light)

Your channel name should be the 'best explanation lab', because the way you just explain and give examples it becomes easy for us to understand it. Love your videos sir

Great demo of refraction, reflection and defusion too.

i must say that this is middly infuriating that he bought empty toilet paper rolls instead of keeping the used ones :{

Please stop testing the physics engine. My FPS irl had dropped a tonne lately.

Definitely the best video of describing the butterfly effect!

Awesome! And now I'm ready to encounter the super-shortened / vertical version months from now.

Would love to see this effect with some smoke!

I’m at 4:30 and think the simulation didn’t account for the defusing of the laser (getting slightly wider the further it goes).

Spread out the tubes and make them larger diameters

my friend and i did this one night in my room when we were playing with lasers. we shined them at round things and a glass bottle on the table to see the light spread out.

Hellow

Coolest thing to me is the fact that wheb it goes 360° you can actually see different lines, corresponding to different reflection patterns

i moved out and year after that i was invited to a beach by friend family because they were visitin the town i live in and at the beach there was this marine rescue team stand and i quicky took a picture about the stand and didnt think about it anymore that day. few days later i read what the stand said and there was a time and adress to a recruiting event. i went there and joined the crew and now thats third of my freetime and its absolutely amazing hobby (i like to be able to work in cold, heavy rain, hunger, dark and big waves). i would call that a butterfly effect

I *just* saw this video. And then i see you replicating it in real life. Thank you for actually doing Experiments on the things the people want to see

Really needed a top-down view like the simulation to appreciate the path and deviations the laser took

you seem like a kid playing around and i love that

Go/Weichi is another fantastic example of the butterfly effect; the first few moves set the path for the whole game, and a mistake in the opening is often not felt until the endgame.

I did not know that the guy from "that 70's show" was this smart, he grew up to be pritty handsome to

Such a cool experiment. Would love to see it in ultra slow motion to see if it can capture the laser light bouncing around.

These need to be so much longer 🙌 love the videa. Thank you for sharing 🙏

Team up with Nils for some wave propagation experiments!!

This could make a very pretty lamp. Wouldn't be bright enough to read, but definitely nice to look at

I need this as ambient lighting for my room. Imagine the cylinders and lasers ceiling mounted and programming the laser to slowly sweep across with the clock. Every minute you will have a totally different pattern along the top of your walls.

amazing! 👍 its just the sum of angular movement.... just one angular displacement whil projecting it far, makes huge difference.... and here you are adding several ones.... one of the best ways to explain the butterfly effect.

That is a really cool visual effect.

In fact the best demonstration is the different height all the splits of the beams come out at, showing the beam was not level and the further up or down the different levels shows that particular part of the beam traveled further than the parts that hit the wall closer to the level of the original beam at its entry height.

My uncle worked with darpa and OSS for 40+ years and he said they experimented with reflective spheres and lasers back in the 1970’s to make a defensive shield for incoming missiles. He said basically think of the most advanced thing you can imagine and then go forward 50 years into the future and that’s what they’re working on. They have technology so advanced that right now if china or Russia etc started a war, darpa could unleash an artificial intelligence computer that flows/feels through the atoms of the air and could all at once explode chinas bombs while blacking out their power inside their entire country at the same time. It’s like Japan not understanding what a nuclear bomb is and then all of a sudden they’re missing entire cities.

This channel does the coolest things.

‘Looks weird,’ to a guy who was just in a room made of mirrors lmaoo

Perhaps would have made a more illustrative effect with a bit of smoke? Also perhaps space the mirrors out more, and use less of them, adding one at a time, then wiggling the laser round. As you add more tubes, you'd see the effect become more and more chaotic.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen, and it's essentially just paper rolls, tin foil and a laser pen! Kudos to you!

Yoooo a Nils Berglund shoutout hell yes

in fact you can see even better on your experiment, a change just the size of the laser (a few mm) can drastically change the outcome. The little changing of the start conditions of the photons trough the thickness of the lazer made them end up trough the hole 360º of possibilities.

Completely unexpected conclusion. Very cool!

Great explanation. I recommend adding haze or fog to your experiment. That should allow you to show the complete path of the laser.

The image produced by the experiment reminded me of a gravitational lens image.

Millions of parallel simulations. Deep explanation

Again, my man is really challenging the physics of the simulation we live in

I just want to say i totally appreciate you for doing these experiments and showing people how the world around us works and exposing people to concepts of science they would otherwise never know anything about 😁

I don't know why but that just sounds like the best entrance to a video I'm going to be doing experiments with lasers and cylindrical mirrors that's just fucking awesome

Actually the fact the beam spreads out so much is really proving the butterfly effect. At each moment the resulting illuminated area represents the spectrum of all the possible landings that originate from each infinitesimal point emitted from the light source. Some zones end up being brighter than others because the chance of a starting point to end up there is higher.

Wow very interesting loved it

I usually like your videos however I really loved this.

*The only one teacher I love the most*

that was super cool! i bet a fog machine like they use at a club or minibar would make the beam super visable! or even some vapor from an ultrasonic fogger!

spread the mirrors out a little! with them so close together, it’s no surprise that diffusion ends up making a 360 of light; i’m sure the tolerance is tight, but it’s worth a shot :) i might have to build this one at home just for giggles. Thanks for the excellent videos, as always! cheers!

That double pendulum video superposition reminded me of that experiment in which a lot of metronomes running at the same tempo, self sinchronized when put all together in moving board... could we achieve the same effect with double pendulumns?

Means minor positive changes in our life can make us successful in future... And same thing is true for negative changes... So, it's our decision what to choose.

Nice, I was reccomended that video recently, probably bc of LiS:True Colors. Fun to see you do this!

I was about to say "how would the beam being reflected all around at the same time means that the butterfly effect is taking effect?" "The width of the beam simulate the small increments of change" *Mindblown*

I'm surprised you never said "light travels as a wave" during this video. (Very cool!)

Rotating mirrors and a slightly moving laser and you have a million dollar art installation. :D

Very nice presentation! And when you think that some physicist continue trying to prove it's not possible to have hidden variables that can generate random looking outcomes ...

I think the first video is a way better example of the butterfly effect than lasers off some cylindrical mirrors.

In a practical sense, there are NO deterministic equations in PHYSICAL chaotic systems. This is due to Thermodynamics and the fundamental errors in all mathematical modeling. 1. Real physical systems are constantly being buffeted by Brownian motion (random thermal agitation). Thermodynamical error. 2. To initialize a model, it is necessary to measure initial (or other boundary) conditions. All measurements are approximate, and none can be perfect, since that would imply infinitely many significant digits. Measurement error. 3. All mathematical models have errors in principle, since it is never possible to include exactly friction, etc. Modeling error. 4. In numerical evaluation of mathematical models, there is always a limit to how accurately the transcendental functions used are computed. There are always terms that need to be dropped. Truncation error. 5. In step-wise calculations, only a limited number of intermediate digits can be retained. Roundoff error. Therefore, even if the pendulums are made and initialized to atomic precision, different physical units will behave differently. This lays to rest the notion of accurate climate modeling.

Even if the laser had a very narrow beam, the natural flexibility of the mirrors and the laser stand would spread out the beam.

You can try a collimator to narrow the beam. Also proper cyllindrical glass mirrors by spraying mirror chemicals onto regular glass rods. And a more regular spacing, all to achieve maximum fidelity to the mathematical model.

Nice monte-carlo run

your vid made me look at diff of chaos vs random... i need to reread chaos theory book

I'm fairly confident you manifested every possible reality in a single physical plane here...

The old 1980s version allows us to actually see the fractals that cause this Chaos effect (featured in The Physics Teacher magazine and others.) Get three spherical mirrors, put them together in contact, and hold a frosted large bright bulb in the roughly triangular space behind. Only three curved mirrors needed for butterfly effect (produces an infinite number of "infinite mirror-tunnel" images, all adjacent to each other!) The apparently-straight edge of the triangle-image visible in the three sphere-mirrors is fractal, and infinitely long. So, your laser above is producing Chaos by shining upon the edge of a fractal, in theory producing a reflected light pattern with 1/F self-similar details at very wide length-scales. Mirrors with N=2 don't work, you need N=3, while higher numbers conceal the fractal structure, making it look more like random white noise. Challenge that I've never figured out: bend some mirrors so, when you look into one, you see a fractal fern! Video-feedback with a flat mirror can do this (producing "Affine" fractals, with no iterated X^2 included.) But, can we do this with just mirrors alone? If so, then we can probably create images of actual Julia sets, by including a curved mirror which gives parabolic distortion!

5:19 "So you can see because we have billions of starting points" Yeah... Billions... As a mathematician, this made my brow furrow

Great illustration, it would never have occurred to me to try this! I suppose the idea of magnifying small causes to get huge effects could be simplified, in a thought experiment, to a bullet directed at a planet in a distant galaxy. A single dust particle hitting the gun would cause the bullet to hit a completely different planet. We'd just be using a single straight line with the same length as a lot of folds to achieve the magnifying effect. It would be probabilistic as well because there's no exact place the dust particle could hit because ultimately there's no "exactness" in position. (I suggested a bullet in the experiment because it wouldn't spread out like a laser beam, further simplifying the general idea.)