Friday, March 26, 2010

The Belousov Zhabotinsky reaction



I saw this on a really interesting BBC4 program last night called The Secret Life of Chaos and just had to share it, it's so beautiful! Almost magical. It's the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.

It led to a whole section of beautiful images brought about by feedback loops Definitely worth a watch!

5 comments:

LeeJayWhistlingIsNotAnnoyingMe said...

That programme is one of the best documentaries I've seen for ages.

I even thought they had some good music choices.

Gareth said...

Feedback loops are a fantastic feature of the natural world, almost any form you see in nature is to some extent the result of one or more feedback loops. Check out the book Chaos by James Glieck and Natures numbers, can't remember who wrote that. really awesome stuff.
Fractals turn up everywhere too, landscapes, rivers, flowers, shells, you name it it's a fractal, well nearly. Not so much land animals.

Vicki said...

Yes it all went a bit Radiohead at one point, very fitting music choices.

Thanks for the tip Gareth, will look that up. There was a bit about land animals in the program actually - about morphogenesis and understanding the development of leopards markings, zebras and giraffes etc.

Beth Ruby said...

Awesome post, I saw I bit of it and it was so well explained.
xx

Vicki said...

Thanks Beth, and thanks for linking! :)