The onset of chaos in passive advection of particles by flow caused by a pulsed source–sink system is documented. This type of model is of interest in various applications. It is of fundamental interest as the first example of a flow without circulation about any contour at any instant displaying chaotic particle paths. Standard chaos diagnostics such as Poincare´ sections and Lyapunov exponents are studied as are more conventional flow visualization measures such as streaklines. Numerical stirring experiments for various collections of particles are performed and the properties of a certain one‐dimensional map induced by the two‐dimensional flow are examined.