Chaotic Dynamics of a Dripping Water Faucet

Abstract

An experimental approach is taken to study the dynamics of the dripping water faucet, a simple deterministic system. The time interval between successive drops may be affected by the many drops preceding it. The time interval is predicted by numerical simulations to exhibit increasingly chaotic behavior with increasing flow rate, showing transitions from single period to period-m ($m=2,4,8,16,...$) dripping, followed by a purely chaotic regime. Deterministic regimes are identified through plots of the time interval against drop number and against successive time interval, and through a bifurcation diagram, but the dripping faucet does not traverse them sequentially as anticipated numerically. Understanding the chaotic dynamics of the dripping faucet will aid in the study of more complex chaotic systems, of which there are a plethora across many disciplines.