#science #fractal
December 7, 2024
Dear Christoph,
I love snowflakes and I have an antique snowflake brooch that I wear in the Winter. Ding one Christmas season you explained that a snowflake is a fractal. I didn’t know what a fractal was, so you explained, and also sent a green, digital fractal Christmas tree. I knew of the many examples of fractals, but I didn’t know the proper name for them. I also especially love spirals.
FRACTAL - A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc. Abstract fractals – such as the Mandelbrot Set – can be generated by a computer calculating a simple equation over and over.
