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We are used to things being predictable in science. It was a great shock in the the 20th century for scientists to discover that some things just weren’t. Even though we thought they should be. Everybody had just convinced themselves that we could cope with small things like atoms being not predictable (because of quantum mechanics) when it turned out that big things could be just as badly behaved (because of chaos). Chaos means that we can’t predict the weather long term, where a magnet will stop, or even how a population insects might behave. It really is dreadfully irritating.Dr Mark McCartney is a senior lecturer in Mathematics at the School of engineering in Ulster university. His research in applied mathematics currently lies within chaotic dynamics and mathematical ecology, but he has also published widely in mathematics education and the history of science. He has co-edited 6 books on the history of mathematics and physics, with the most recent (edited with Chris Hollings) being Oxford’s Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy: The First 400 Years, published by Oxford University Press.
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