Butterfly Effect: Where'd it get That Name?

Question:

Why is the Butterfly Effect called "The Butterfly Effect?"

Background:

We all know, because we paid attention in science class or because of the horrible Ashton Kutcher movie, that the Butterfly Effect refers to the idea that very small changes in initial conditions can have very large effects on outcomes.

We here at the International Academy for Life's Most Important and Obscure Questions (IALMOQ) think about it this way: You're standing on the top of a mountain with a snowball in your hand.  All around the mountain are cute little villages.  Maybe it's a Swiss mountain and all the villages have that cute, graham cracker look.  You know that whichever side of the mountain the ball rolls down will suffer a terrible but fun to watch avalanche.  Here's the problem; you can't throw the snow ball down one side or the other.  You can only throw it straight up.  Is it possible in those conditions to predict which quaint village will get demolished?  Probably not.

Suppose, just as you throw, the wind swirls a bit to the West, down goes the west village.  Or maybe you slip a bit and the ball sails to the East.  Kerpow! East Towne!  The point is, small, very small changes at the moment of the toss will completely change the outcome.  This is called the Butterfly Effect.  But why?


So What's the answer?

While theories about unpredictability in 3 or more variable systems has been around since the 1890's the phrase "The Butterfly Effect" can be traced to one Dr. Edward Lorenz.  In 1961 Lorenz was using an early computer to run weather simulations.  When forced to reload the program in progress, Lorenz backed up in time to a point where he had the available data and then reloaded.  Here's the trick.  The software was running 6 decimal places.  Lorenz only reloaded the first 3.  After a few simulated days, the weather, the entire weather system for the planet had diverged what the previous run.  Lorenz wrote a paper on the subject and it was noted later that the difference between .001 and .000001 in his simulation was about the force of a butterfly flapping its wing.

So, The Butterfly Effect is called the "The Butterfly Effect" because Dr. Lorenz showed, accidentally, that a force no greater than the flapping of butterfly wing, cycled a few hundred thousand times in a complex system, could result in global changes in the weather.


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Sources:

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A Bare Bodkin? What's That?

Question:

What is a "bare Bodkin?"

The Background:

In William Shakespreare's "Hamlet" during Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" speech, Hamlet says:

"When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?"

We know, from Mrs. Scott's 10 grade English class that Hamlet is talking about killing himself.  So, "his quietus make" means to kill himself but with what?  A bare bodkin?  Really?

So What's the Answer:

Most people agree that a bodkin is a small knife or dagger similar to a poniard.  We at the Organisation for the Investigation of Life's Most Important and Obscure Questions (OILMIOQ) wish to point out that a Bodkin is also a long hat pin or blunt needle used for threading ribbon.  It would come as no surprise to us to learn that what Shakespreare was pointing out was pointing out that people are really very easy to kill.  Who doesn't have an old aunt who died in an unfortunate hat pin accident?  What a great Christmas story that is!

So, a bare bodkin is a pointy thing, possibly a dagger or sewing implement, that Hamlet could have used on himself in the first hour of the play thus saving us all a great deal of torment in Mrs. Scott's English class.

Got a question?  Drop us a line at obscurequestions@yahoo.com or just post a comment.  We love comments.

Sources:

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Moon Brain: Why Do We Always See the Same Side of The Moon?

The Question:

Why do we always see the same side of the moon?



The Background:

Remember the man in the moon?  Ever wondered what the back of his head looks like?  Ever wonder why no one except a couple of Apollo Astronauts have ever seen the "dark side" of the moon?

It can be a little hard to wrap your head around the fact that the same side of the moon always faces the Earth.  Try it like this.  Look up at the moon.  Imagine that the side of the moon that you are looking at were to come crashing straight down into you and through the Earth. When it pushed its way out the other side, the folks in China would see the back side of the moon as it flew back up into space right?  Right.  Only that's not what happens.  Folks in China see the same side of the moon we do.    Observe this picture of the full moon rising over the National Stadium in China:

It's the same side of the moon!   WTF?!!

So What's the Answer?

The answer to this question comes in two parts.  

First, the moon is turning at exactly the same rate it orbits the Earth.  Weird huh?  But it makes sense if you think about it.  In order your you and me, on opposite sides of the planet, to see the same side of the moon, it must be turning at exactly the same rate that it is orbiting the Earth.  You can do this with your fingers.  Hold a finger on one hand still.  Now spin a finger from the other hand around it slowly, turning it so that the same side is always facing the first finger.    That's what the moon is doing.  

The orbital period for the moon is roughly 27.321583 days.  Roughly.

The moon rotates on its axis roughly once every 27.321583 days as well.

How trippy is that?  Even weirder is why.

It turns out that the gravitational drag between two spheres will eventually slow their rotation so that their rotation matches their orbital periods.  This weird force is called tidal locking.  When the moon first formed, it did spin but the drag of gravity has slowed it till it always shows us the same side.  Since the moon is not a perfect sphere, the heaviest part of the moon settled toward us.  If you turned your bike over, put a weight on the back wheel, and then spun the wheel, when it slowed the weight would settle toward the Earth right?  Same thing happened to the moon.

Tidal locking with the moon has slowed the Earth too but the Earth is much more massive so we still spin once every 24  hours...Roughly.

We see the same side of the moon at all times because tidal locking has pulled the heaviest side toward us and it now spins at exactly the right speed to keep the heaviest side toward us.  

Sources: 

We don't need no stinking sources!  We are the source.

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