To understand chaos theory, play a game of Plinko

Of all the pricing games on the iconic television show The Price Is Right, perhaps the most exciting of all is Plinko. Contestants play an initial pricing game to obtain up to 5 round, flat disks — known as Plinko chips — which they then press flat against a pegboard wherever they choose, releasing it whenever they like. One-at-a-time, the Plinko chips cascade down the board, bouncing off of the pegs and moving horizontally as well as vertically, until they emerge at the bottom of the board, landing in one of the prize (or no prize) slots.

Quite notably, contestants who drop a chip that happens to land in the maximum prize slot, always found in the direct center of the board, often try to repeat the exact same drop with whatever remaining disks they possess. Despite their best efforts, however, and the fact that the initial positioning of the disks might be virtually identical, the ultimate paths the disks wind up traversing are almost never identical. Surprisingly, this game is a perfect illustration of chaos theory, and helps explain the second law of thermodynamics in understandable terms. Here’s the science…