Splash Biography

Fractals are a weird and wonderful intersection of mathematics and art. Conventionally, we think of the shapes of things as being well-defined, neatly behaved squares, circles, or triangles. But that's boring, and nature doesn't even behave like that. When was the last time you saw a triangular tree or perfectly circular island? There's much more to fractals than those weird colorful images you might see as a screensaver. In this course, we'll look into some of the interesting and surprisingly simple math behind fractals and create some of our own. In particular, we'll use a paper copier to turn a triangle into a fern, create the famed Mandelbrot set, and go over some of the applications this fun branch of math has to offer.

Fractals are a weird and wonderful intersection of mathematics and art. Conventionally, we think of the shapes of things as being well-defined, neatly behaved squares, circles, or triangles. But that's boring, and nature doesn't even behave like that. When was the last time you saw a triangular tree or perfectly circular island? There's much more to fractals than those weird colorful images you might see as a screensaver. In this course, we'll look into some of the interesting and surprisingly simple math behind fractals and create some of our own. In particular, we'll use a paper copier to turn a triangle into a fern, create the famed Mandelbrot set, and go over some of the applications this fun branch of math has to offer.