Students Making Sense of Chaotic Behavior

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Abstract
This article reports a preliminary study of high school students making sense of the behavior displayed by a Lorenzian Water Wheel. The Lorenzian Water Wheel is a rotating disk driven by the flow of water whose motion may be periodic or not, depending on different parameters (e.g., tilt of the wheel, flow rate of the water, and amount of friction). The study aims to contribute toward new basis for the learning of dissipative dynamics through the analysis and experimentation with common phenomena. The study also aims to support the design of learning environments that focus on fundamental aspects of dissipative dynamics‐such as the origins of turbulence, the relationships between periodicity and predictability, or the notion of an attractor—by refining intuitions that emerge from the daily experience with the surrounding world.

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