Illustrating the butterfly effect with a laser

This new #shorts episode shows how sensitive dependence on initial conditions, known popularly as “butterfly effect“, can be demonstrated by shining a laser on an array of cylindrical perfectly reflecting obstacles. From the start to the end of the simulation, the angle of the arriving laser beam changes by 000 086 degrees. The simulation pauses briefly whenever the beam is reflected at least 50 times on the cylinders. To make the beam’s path easier to follow, the color changes slightly at each reflection, and the intensity decreases slightly. Music: Progressive Rock by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Artist: Current version of the C code used to make these animations: Some outreach articles on mathematics: (in French, some with a