A Hénon Map Inspired by an Artwork Inspired by a Hénon map

As part of my maths in museums work I was talking to someone at the National Galleries of Scotland. The world of art lies a little outside my comfort zone, which is partly why I was interested in talking to them: if I want to encourage other people to venture outside their comfort zones in the direction of mathematics I should probably practice what I preach.

Anyway, just outside the Modern One gallery there is a sculpted land feature created by artist Charles Jencks called Landform which you can see to the top-right of the embedded satellite view of the area below:

The sweeping curves and other-worldly, natural-but-not-quite feel to this formation reminded me of something, but I couldn't immediately remember what. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Jeff Goldblum popped up:

Lava Lamps and Internet Security

The security of data in our internet-connected world hinges on the generation of very large random numbers. True randomness, however, is next to impossible to achieve, so modern internet security firms work very hard to find ways to generate numbers that seem as random as possible. One such company has found a solution in the form of lava lamps.

A lava lamp is a bottle filled with water and blobs of wax, both brightly coloured. A hot lamp in the base of the lamp heats up the contents of the bottle, melting the wax which gloopily rises, where it cools and falls back to the base before being heated up and rising again. The motion of the wax in the lamp is chaotic, which means that it is very hard to predict.

Lava Lamps, by Mike Mozart

Internet security company Cloudflare have in their headquarters not just one lava lamp, but one hundred of them. There is a camera constantly watching this wall of chaotic-motion generators. As digital images are stored as a series of numbers describing aspects of each pixel, and each pixel's input is based on a highly chaotic process, this means that each resulting image file does a very good impression of a random number.

Read more about this on Cloudflare's website at the link below:

How do Lava Lamps Help With Internet Security?

Chaos in the Weather

One of a collection of posters produced for World Year of Mathematics 2000 and displayed on trains in the London Underground, this one focuses on chaotic behaviour in things like the stock market and weather.

This is a low-res version. Download the full-sized image at the link below:

World Mathematical Year 2000 London Underground Posters

Also available to purchase in a set of all 12 posters pre-printed at 61cm x 28cm from the Mathematical Association.