Fractal Geometry: An Artistic Side of Infinity Fractal Geometry is beautiful. Clothes are designed f

Fractal Geometry: An Artistic Side of Infinity

Fractal Geometry is beautiful. Clothes are designed from it and you can find fractal calendars for your house. There’s just something about that infinitely endless pattern that intrigues the eye– and brain. 

Fractals are “geometric shapes which can be split into parts which are a reduced-size copy of the whole” (source: wikipedia). They demonstrate a property called self-similarity, in which parts of the figure are similar to the greater picture. Theoretically, each fractal can be magnified and should be infinitely self-similar. 

One simple fractal which can easily display self-similarity is the Sierpinski Triangle. You can look at the creation of such a fractal:

What do you notice? Each triangle is self similar– they are all equilateral triangles. The side length is half of the original triangle. And what about the area? The area is a quarter of the original triangle. This pattern repeats again, and again. 

Two other famous fractals are the Koch Snowflake and the Mandelbrot Set. 

The Koch Snowflake looks like: 

 (source: wikipedia)

It is constructed by going in 1/3 of the of the side of an equilateral triangle and creating another equilateral triangle. You can determine the area of a Koch Snowflake by following this link.

The Mandelbrot set…

… is:

the set of values of c in the complex plane for which the orbit of 0 under iteration of the complex quadratic polynomial z_n+1 = z_n² + c remains bounded. (source: wikipedia)

It is a popular fractal named after Benoît Mandelbrot. More on creating a Mandelbrot set is found here, as well as additional information. 

You can create your own fractals with this fractal generator. 

But what makes fractals extraordinary?

Fractals are not simply theoretical creations. They exist aspatterns in nature! Forests can model them, so can clouds and interstellar gas! 

Artists are fascinated by them, as well. Consider The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai: 

Even graphic artists use fractals to create mountains or ocean waves. You can watch Nova’s episode of Hunting the Hidden Dimensionfor more information.