When I was reading Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, I first got to know of the existence of the concept of chaos theory. Of course it was through the character of Ian Malcom (played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie). The theory got more coverage in its sequel novel The Lost World again through the character of Malcom. For starters chaos has nothing to do with the literal meaning. No nobody is creating chaos here in its nuisance connotation. To explain chaos theory in layman's terms - any system which has an expected outcome is said to be chaotic if its sensitive to the way it begins whereby the outcome becomes unexpected (chaotic). This of course is a very loose definition and also an incomplete definition. For more technical details see this.
Another related jargon is the "Butterfly Effect" which effectively summarises what or how a chaotic system is: Imagine a butterfly flapping its wings happily on a summer day! Now imagine that the air disturbance caused by its flapping sets of a series of events or series of such air disturbances which then result in a fierce tornado at some other place! So in the event if the butterfly were not flapping its wings in the first place the tornado wouldn't have happened !! Wow, that's something! In my childhood I used to think of such incidents. e.g. If I snap my fingers right now (or let out a low whistle or jump or anything else for that matter!), the series of events happening later will follow a certain course. But if I don't snap my fingers maybe a different set of events will follow! Who knows! I must choose to snap them or not, so cannot verify events following both! Something similar to the Butterfly Effect! Very very interesting indeed.
