Catching the Essence of Chaos

The movement of the balls in this frantic arcade game is based upon mathematical chaos - the movement of a board down a slope with moguls as discussed in Edward N. Lorenzs book The Essence of Chaos. Solving the set of differential equations when starting with certain initial conditions (speed and direction) leads to chaos - deterministic paths for each ball/board, but with sensitive dependency upon those initial conditions. This means that two boards that start a fraction of a metre apart, will within finite distance take such different paths that their position, speed and direction are no mor...