This course offers an overview of the change of focus from the framework of classical physics - tremendously successful in the understanding of a static, ideal world - to a new approach involving nonlinearity, change, and chaotic behaviour. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the monumental edifice of classical science was known to be apt to tackle a static, ideal world, in sharp contrast with the complex reality governed by irreversible processes. Historically, thermodynamics, in particular the Second Law, opened the way to understanding the role played by irreversibility in the description of systems in states near-equilibrium and far-from-equilibrium.
By the 1970s, mainly due to the advent of the availability of computers, scientists and engineers were gaining new insights into an astonishing range of real-world behaviours. A new age of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics had arrived, where the smallest of actions might have the greatest of consequences.
This course provides an introduction to chaos theory, an overview of the revolution in scientific thinking it caused, and a fascinating range of insights into its consequences and applications.