Lorenz Water Wheel

Objective: Build a Lorenz Water Wheel (a water wheel with holes in the buckets that appears to display chaotic behavior in the way it rotates one direction and then the other). Describe precisely the relationship between the physical system and the Lorenz equations. Find variants that are more closely modeled by the Lorenz equations.

Progress:

Fall 2002 (Michael Abraham, Elise Beisecker, Stephen Hsu, Isaac Webster)
Constructed wheel that apparently produced desired behavior; unable to derive equation.

Spring 2002 (Ryan Hynd) Constructed much more elaborate version, but was unable to reproduce desired behavior.