system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If you conducted an experiment where you spilled the same amount of liquid, from the same height on to the same flat surface, would the liquid land (and splash) in the same place every time? If not, why not?
gpt
If you're asking "are the governing laws of fluid motion deterministic" the answer is yes for any kind of normal fluid at a scale where you can neglect quantum effects.

As a thought experiment, think of an eye dropper releasing a single drop of water onto a piece of glass. If you have *the exact same* initial conditions, it should always have the same end result. The reality is that turbulence, instabilities, and other such phenomena (like a droplet breaking apart when hitting a surface) are *extremely* sensitive to initial conditions, and it's quite impossible to reliably achieve the exact same initial conditions (outside of a computer simulation) in exacting detail.

Typically macroscopic, statistical or averaged descriptions of the drop impact will remain the same (X% of liquid is found within Y radius), but all the little minutiae will be rather different.