Rudy Rucker, James Gleick, and Autodesk teamed up to produce
a program that turns a PC into a chaos lab. One of the great things about Chaos
Theory is that the concepts can be deeply explored with a home computer. Chaos
is a young science, and the amateur explorer stands a good chance of making new
discoveries with inexpensive tools. Chaos: The Software has six sections:
Mandelbrot Sets - Use software tools to spelunk deep into the
fluorescent crevices of the Mandlebrot set.
Magnets & Pendulum - An apparently simple arrangements of magnets on a table
leads to wildly chaotic motion of a
pendulum swinging above.
Strange Attractors - Create a dynamical system that never
repeats itself.
The Chaos Game - Strangely beautiful organic shapes appear through the fog.
Fractal Forgeries - Apply a range of fractal dimensions
to clouds, mountains and planets, and watch the effects in a short movie.
Toy Universes - Several cellular automata are presented
for your tweaking pleasure.
The user can play with color, sound, chaoticity, animation,
image saving, etc. The on-line help and beautiful 240-page
manual are both excellent. For those tired of just reading
about Chaos Theory, this software lets them play with it.
ACCESS:
Chaos: The Software
Autodesk, 1990
for DOS systems
Here is the TEXT POPUP for Chaos...
Randomness is a red herring, The object itself does not depend on randomness.
The object exists regardless of what I happen to do.
- Michael Barnsley on "The Chaos Game," chapter 6
