[E8crossE8]

OK, I see your point. How about if I said ‘a chaotic system is a system in precarious balance a non-chaotic system has an “entrenched” (for lack of a better word) balance?’

That sounds like a perfectly good qualitative description - it captures the essence!

[TigersEye]

Thank you. I was just looking for a way to put it in layman’s terms. I loaned out my Physics for Dummies book and never got it back. ;^)

[AFPhys]

Excellent description of chaos.

The only thing that I’ll add is that in a chaotic system, after your “nudge”, the tiniest change in the initial conditions:
is extremely likely to result in the system at a relatively short, later time appearing very different from what the system would have appeared without the “nudge”.