The Butterfly Effect for Idiots (Not the movie)?

Question

I have to research the Butterfly Effect for school, and I was wondering if anybody could help me understand it a little better, because a lot of the articles are kinda confusing. What is it?

Answer 1

basically the butterfly effect states that a minor disturbance (such as the flap of a butterflies wings) can have different effects on a much more powerful disturbance (such as a tornado) depending on how, where, and when it is made.  In the movie, going back to the past and altering any minor detail of the mailbox incident changed his whole future drastically.  

Answer 2

The butterfly effect is a side effect of mathematical modeling complex systems such as the weather or climate.  It was found by Lorentz that in computer programs that do such predictions, small changes in the input parameters can lead to large changes in the outcome of the predictions of the model, and these small changes are magnified by increasing the number of iterations in the model.  The name comes from the idea that if there were a parameter for the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings, that small change would show up in a major change in the outcome of the computer prediction

However, this should not be assumed to easily apply to real physical systems, such as weather and climate, where the number of variables and their values are not even known.  Simply stated, the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings a thousand years ago is easily overwhelmed by a .000000001% change of solar energy output for a  microsecond during the same thousand years.  

Answer 3

the effect is a synonym in chaos research, stating that everything in the world is more ore less influenced by anything else. these influences are so complex that no one could ever understand them and therefore the world seems chaotic.

in the example, the butterfly is causing a hurricane at the other end of the world by setting off a chain reaction which no one ever could trace back. the hurricane was immanent the whole time, but the one flap caused it to break out.