Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Fascinating Fractals!

I love fractals. It is a new passion. What's a fractal? Hard to explain, but it is a picture of math functions, in nature, in reflections, computer generated. It is when you look really deep into something (magnified) and find something really cool. One of the most famous fractals is the Mandelbrot (the guy who found it, he's still alive btw) fractal below. Basically this is a computer generated graph of the following function z=z2+c (or z=z^2+c).
Now lets magnify the fractal here. From a section or set.

The flower is from the M-set of the Mandelbrot
So, it is like the Energizer Bunny. It keeps going and going. Eternal is a word that comes to mind! I have been digging this stuff for a few days. Here is a web site if you want to dig further too. (check out the Wada Fractals)

5 comments:

Cindy Jensen said...

Okay, really cool to look at but I just don't get or even come close to comprehending how you can take a picture of math . . . but then I failed algebra 3 times so I am not surprised!

~Stappsters~ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
~Stappsters~ said...

I don't fully understand, but remeber graphing with dots on a quadrant(y=2, x=3)? That's the beginning step to graphing functions and making pictures.

April said...

Ber tried to explain fractals to me once, he's fascinated by them also!

Rachel said...

Wow, omygosh......only my mother would have a facination with math ;)