In
1963, a model for thermally induced fluid convection in the atmosphere
was developed by E. N. Lorenz (J. Atmos. Sci. 20:130, 1963). It
is expressed by the following ordinary differential equations:
where
x is proportional to the fluid velocity, y and z measure the fluid
temperature, and s, r
and b are the Prandtl number, the Raleigh
number and a geometric factor, respectively.
By
using the following Java™ applet, you can experiment Lorenz's "strange
attractor". In order to use this applet you need
Java™
Plug-in and Java™3D.
For installation help see instructions at the bottom of this
page.
Instructions:
Dragging
a mouse with mouse button 1 : rotate the scene.
Dragging
a mouse with mouse button 2 : zoom in/out
Dragging
a mouse with mouse button 3: translate POINT.
Add : add
a POINT in the scene.
Start :
start drawing the trajectory of the points.
Stop : stop
drawing.
Reset :
clears the canvas.
Clear :
crears the canvas and delete all POINTs.
Reset View
: go back to the initial viewing position.
If you install
Java™ Plug-in in C:\Program Files\JavaSoft, you should install
Java3D™ in the same directory (C:\Program Files\JavaSoft).
For the Java plug-in and Java3D, you might have to do the following
setting:
1) Start Java Plug-in setting from "Start" > "Settings"
> "Control Panel" > "Java Plug-in".
2) Select "Advanced" tag.
3) Change "Use Java Plug-in Default" to "JRE 1.X
in C:\Program Files\JavaSoft..." (where "X" is
the version number of Java Plug-in you installed).
4) Exit "Java Plug-in" setting.
