Chaos Crochet

[agent compassion]

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=qw1103201460519B216

London - Urged by her professor to "do something useful", a British mathematician has made a crochet model of chaos, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Hinke Osinga of the engineering mathematics department at Bristol University in the west of England needed 25 511 stitches to represent the Lorenz equations that describe chaotic systems.

Osinga and her professor, Bernd Krauskopf, were offering a bottle of champagne to anyone who cared to follow the pattern published in the journal Mathematics Intelligencer, the public broadcaster said.

Osinga was making hexagonal lace motifs during a Christmas break two years ago, when Krauskopf asked: "Why don't you crochet something useful?"

The two spent 85 hours - whether during their working hours or spare time was not reported - to create their representation of chaos, propped up by steel wire.

"Imagine a leaf floating in a turbulent river and consider how it passes either to the left or to the right around a rock somewhere downstream," Osinga said.

"Each stitch in the crochet pattern represents a single point - a leaf - that ends up at the rock," she added.

The result is currently finding use as a Christmas decoration, suggesting it will be tossed out with the rest of the tattered festive trappings on Twelfth Night - January 6. - Sapa-dpa

[DJRubberducky]

I'm pissed there's no link to a picture!

[/o\]

indeed

[agent compassion]

Argh, I know. I looked for one, too. Apparently the finished product is on display, perhaps the displayers have a website. I'll see what I can locate....

:returns:

Oh good grief. They're using it as a Xmas decoration. They better not trash it with the tinsel....

Geez, if I had a crochet model of chaos, I'd pin it up on my ceiling and freak out the guests.

[DJRubberducky]

Fear the KodiaK's Google-Fu:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4099615.stm

[LMNO]

Oooooooo.  Pretty.

[agent compassion]

Me wantee.

[sakredchao]

pretty symetrical...

[agent compassion]

pretty symetrical...

I like the way it refuses to lay flat. Look at how it curves and twists!

Maybe I'll take up crochet again, just to make that piece.

[sakredchao]

*shrug*

i can add stitches a lot so it wrinkles the fabric.

don't get me wrong, i think it's a really cool piece of art, just not chaotic.

[bob-o]

i thought it was going to be more airy-like...

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/anm/preprints/2004r03.pdf

The biggest problem is they only used 2 colors.  I would hate to try to actually follow the Lorenz attractor back and forth across the pattern, though.  Here are some more pretty pictures.

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/lorenz/

Here is a cool model, you can see the line going back and forth.  Plus you can play with the numbers and see what happens to the attractor.

http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/chaos_new/Lorenz.html