Double Pendulums are Chaoticn't

2swap · 4.4M views · 2025 · 8:58

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Fundamental physicsRecreational & visual mathexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited as a related video when threads touch on chaos, predictability and fractals from pendulum state spaces.

What it is

A short explainer from 2swap on the chaotic behavior of double pendulums. It examines how predictable the system is for some starting conditions and whether closed-form solutions exist.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2025 to 2026.

What Hacker News said

Cites badosu · 2025-07 · on “Show HN: Beyond Z²+C, Plot Any Fractal”

You can make a fractal out of the state graph of a double pendulum: [this video] I don't doubt there could be an iterative formula that maps to it, but I'd be very surprised.

Cites EMIRELADERO · 2025-09 · on “What Is the Fourier Transform?”

As an aside, here's a relevant video about the (sometimes not) chaotic nature of double pendulums: [this video]

Cites satvikpendem · 2026-04 · on “Claude mixes up who said what and that's not OK”

Correct, it's akin to chaos theory or the butterfly effect, which, even it can be predictable for many ranges of input: [this video]