Morning Assembly Presentation: The
Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory
Prayer (Muskan)
“Dear God,
In a world where small things can lead to great changes, guide our steps and our choices. Help
us trust in Your bigger plan even when life feels uncertain or chaotic. Teach us to find beauty in
unexpected outcomes and to always strive for goodness.
Amen.”
Thought (Harshita)
“A small act of kindness, a simple choice, or a tiny moment of courage—these can change the
course of a life, a community, or even the world. Chaos shows us that nothing we do is ever too
small to matter.”
News (Inaaya)
Geet:
“Imagine: the year is 1905. One day, the clock on the tower in Berne, Switzerland, is a little
late—two minutes late, to be precise. Because of that, a man who lives near the tower does not
wake up at his usual time to go to work. Realizing the mistake, he becomes a little nervous. It
takes him a little longer to get dressed, drink some coffee, and leave the house. He ends up
leaving five minutes later than usual.”
Pritha:
“He is about to cross the street. Meanwhile, a banker gets into his new car, unaware that it has
a problem with the brakes. The man crosses the street and doesn’t see the car. He is run over
and dies.
This man is no less than Albert Einstein.
That year, Einstein was supposed to publish four works that would become the foundation of
modern physics. Innovations like GPS, TV screens, and semiconductors—the building blocks of
laptops—never happen. The computer, the laptop, the mobile device you are watching this
video on, never come into existence. And this video… doesn’t exist either.”
Samaira:
“This sequence of events is an example of what is known as the butterfly effect, a concept within
Chaos Theory.
For centuries, the world was explained through the laws of Isaac Newton and classical physics.
According to those laws, if the current state of an object is known, its future behavior can be
predicted with relative ease.
However, Chaos Theory challenges this deterministic view: not everything is predictable, and
not everything works like clockwork.
As early as the 1800s, mathematicians began to suggest that not all phenomena could be
explained by Newtonian physics.”
Anoushka:
“But it was a meteorologist named Edward Lorenz who made Chaos Theory a visible
phenomenon.
In 1961, he was working on a mathematical model to forecast the weather. Lorenz inputted data
such as temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind direction into his computer. The computer
would generate graphs to predict the weather—not always perfectly, but fairly close to reality.
One morning, Lorenz decided to verify some results. To save time, he stopped the computer,
manually re-entered the numbers, and went to grab a coffee. When he returned, the chart the
computer produced was drastically different from the original.
At first, the results looked similar, but then they diverged dramatically.”
Yuvika Ondhia:
“Surprised, Lorenz checked the numbers and found that he had entered a value that was just
three decimal points off from the original—a difference as small as a particle of dust on the Eiffel
Tower, or one less feather in the weight of a duck.”
Parnika:
“From this, Lorenz deduced that the phenomenon wasn’t a special case.
There are systems in which tiny differences can, over time, lead to monumental changes.
This made everything seem unpredictable.
In theory, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a chain of events that
eventually causes a tornado in Texas.”
Vani:
“Even though we have a good understanding of how the universe works, there are no
measurements accurate enough to determine the exact position and speed of every atom.
This ‘inaccuracy’ makes long-term prediction extremely difficult—one of the reasons why
forecasting, especially over long periods, is unreliable.”
Yuvika:
“Yet chaos is not the same as disorder. Though chaos makes prediction difficult, the universe is
not random.
Effects still follow causes.
And no matter how chaotic a system seems, it always follows a trajectory toward a certain
point.”
Saanvi:
“For instance, in Lorenz’s weather model, the trajectory eventually formed a pattern that looked
like butterfly wings.
Understanding these chaotic patterns has practical applications.
In the stock market, it reminds us that even a small fluctuation can lead to a crisis—so we speak
not of predictions, but of probabilities.
In medicine, it helps us understand the erratic behavior of a heart with cardiac arrhythmia.
Even in social dynamics, the butterfly effect can be used to analyze how one negative comment
on social media can trigger waves of trolling.”
Panicker:
“Our universe still obeys the laws of cause and effect.
The sun will continue to rise every morning.
The planes we build will continue to fly.
But Chaos Theory introduces an element of uncertainty into our understanding of the universe.
It reveals the limits of our knowledge.”
