No explanation was given for the counterintuitive observations.
Reactions normally go to completion and then stop.
This reaction appeared to violate thermodynamic principles and, after going to completion as expected, it reverted back to the original state and repeated the process. Since the chemicals were readily available, my own initial experience with the reaction resulted in a 20-year love affair with oscillating chemical reactions. Summit proposed to study the B-Z Reaction in the laboratory and to use the CRAY C90 to model its chemical and chaotic behavior. They based a lot of their work on the results of Swinney, a physicist at the University of Texas, who obtained evidence for chaos in the B-Z Reaction. The first phase of Summit's work resulted in the compilation of a very extensive bibliography of research centered on the B-Z Reaction, with emphasis on developing computer programs that modeled its behavior, especially the chaotic behavior.