We live in a world that we can consider, for the most part, quite predictable. For example, I can confidently say that if someone doesn't study for a test, they won't do as well on the test than if they had studied. But what if it wasn't always like this? What if nothing had a set outcome and every possible outcome was “fair game”? This is chaos theory. Chaos theory is the study of dynamical systems that strongly depend on their initial conditions (abarim). There are several systems so dependent on their initial conditions that even a rounding error in an equation will throw it out of control: they are considered part of the butterfly effect (stsci). Systems that fall into the category of chaos theory and the butterfly effect are used to determine the behavior of a system over time. To model the system we need to know the exact initial conditions; however, if the values ​​are even slightly off, the butterfly effect will occur and cause the system to malfunction. Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn't work with integers or even real numbers. This makes it impossible to determine the exact initial conditions. So how can Chaos Theory use a principle that depends entirely on its initial conditions, when we can't even determine those conditions? Chaos Theory itself is a relatively new term, however the underlying ideas date back to the 1800s. In 1880, Henri Poincaré was the first to come across chaotic systems during his research on the three-body problem (Earth connection). The three-body problem involves taking an initial set of data points and then determining their motion over time. At that time, this three-body problem was used to track the motion of planets and other celestial bodies...... middle of paper ......ttp://www.stsci.edu/~ lbradley/ seminar/butterfly.html>."HENRI POINCARE." United States Naval Academy | Home page. United States Naval Academy, April 10, 2011. Web. December 08, 2011. Heresiarch, Wile E. “Chaos Theory.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia, 9 September 2009. Web. 09 December 2011. .Maudlin, Tim and Frank Artnzenius. “Time Travel and Modern Physics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 1 January 2009. Web. 08 December 2011. .Uittenbogaard, Arie. "Chaos Theory for Beginners; An Introduction." Quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the reliability of the Bible. Abarim, 5 June 2010. Web. 08 December. 2011. .