Lorenz Attractor

This is an example of plotting Edward Lorenz's 1963 "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow" in a 3-dimensional space using mplot3d.

Note

Because this is a simple non-linear ODE, it would be more easily done using SciPy's ODE solver, but this approach depends only upon NumPy.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def lorenz(x, y, z, s=10, r=28, b=2.667):
    """
    Given:
       x, y, z: a point of interest in three dimensional space
       s, r, b: parameters defining the lorenz attractor
    Returns:
       x_dot, y_dot, z_dot: values of the lorenz attractor's partial
           derivatives at the point x, y, z
    """
    x_dot = s*(y - x)
    y_dot = r*x - y - x*z
    z_dot = x*y - b*z
    return x_dot, y_dot, z_dot


dt = 0.01
num_steps = 10000

# Need one more for the initial values
xs = np.empty(num_steps + 1)
ys = np.empty(num_steps + 1)
zs = np.empty(num_steps + 1)

# Set initial values
xs[0], ys[0], zs[0] = (0., 1., 1.05)

# Step through "time", calculating the partial derivatives at the current point
# and using them to estimate the next point
for i in range(num_steps):
    x_dot, y_dot, z_dot = lorenz(xs[i], ys[i], zs[i])
    xs[i + 1] = xs[i] + (x_dot * dt)
    ys[i + 1] = ys[i] + (y_dot * dt)
    zs[i + 1] = zs[i] + (z_dot * dt)


# Plot
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')

ax.plot(xs, ys, zs, lw=0.5)
ax.set_xlabel("X Axis")
ax.set_ylabel("Y Axis")
ax.set_zlabel("Z Axis")
ax.set_title("Lorenz Attractor")

plt.show()