Many people have seen or heard of fractals, but not many people actually know what they are. The answer to the question "What are fractals?" is really simple. Fractals can be anything that contains self-similar images within itself. For example, the human.
Circulatory system is a fractal. If you look at the blood vessels in your hand, they resemble the overall shape that the complete system takes on. We are constantly surrounded by fractals and most people don't realize it. A majority of the fractals you see.
in the world today self occur. Which means humans did not construct them. I would now like to discuss the computer-generated fractals like those that you would find in the Bare Fractals and Fractal Art sections like you might see in a museum.
Computer generated fractals are created using geometry. A mathematician would tell you that fractals are created at the boundary between chaos and order. To fully understand fractals, one must understand the chaos theory. The theory states that everything is subjected to so many variables that it becomes almost, but not completely, random. A meteorologist named Edward Lorenz helped to pioneer the study of chaology in the 1960's. Using a simple system of equations to model convection in the atmosphere, he ran headlong into "sensitivity to initial conditions". In the process he sketched the outlines of one of the first recognized chaotic attractors. In Lorenz's meteorological computer modeling, he discovered the underlying mechanism of deterministic chaos: simply-formulated system with only a few variables can display highly complicated.
behavior that is unpredictable. Using his digital computer, slashing through reams of printed numbers and simple strip chart plots of the variables, he saw that slight differences in one variable had profound effects on the outcome of the whole system. This was one of the first clear demonstrations of sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
