Well, Fractals. What are they, you ask? According to Wikipedia, A fractal may be defined as “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole”. Now you may ask me what you mean by a rough or fragmented shape. Well I haven’t the slightest idea. But Wikipedia does, so if you’d like to, you can head over there and find out for yourself.
So, I’m assuming that you did head over to the mighty Wikipedia wiki, and found out all about Fractals. I’m also assuming that about half of you didn’t understand most of it (It took me a long time to figure out, anyway…). But even if you didn’t understand the vast bank of text on the subject on Wikipedia, you might have noticed that a lot of it is, in fact, math. You only need to understand high-school level of math (That is, basic math) to know what’s going on to make a fractal. I know this may discourage some of you, but I’m also assuming that you’re brave souls, and will have the strength to hang in and finish reading the rest of this post.
Anyway, getting back to the topic: Fractals. Okay, so you say, “I’ve read about them, now what?”. If you know your basic math, then there’s a likely chance that you’ve heard of a set of numbers, called complex numbers, and unlike their name, are not very complex to learn about. Again, Wikipedia provides a most excellent, although detailed, summary on the subject. For those of you who find what Wikipedia has to offer, somewhat vague, or are too lazy to read the whole thing, try this site, which gives a most simple introduction on the subject.
By now, you’ve probably acquired a fine knowledge on fractals, and in doing so, brushed up your complex number math. Now, you may ask “So what? Fractals exist. So what?”. Fractals are really quite fun. If you’re a programmer, then you can make fun fractal programs, and generate cool pictures from them. I’ve done one recently, and its come out OK, but still needs a bit of work. I’ve coded it in C++, if you’re wondering. Even if you’re not a budding programmer, then you can still have fun with fractals. They make cool class projects (for students!), they inspire ideas on colour combinations (for those architects and designers out there), they make mathematicians go crazy (in a good way), and they leave the rest of us wanting some more of them!
These are the results of my fractal generating program that I made:
Yes, it did produce some interesting results… Try and see for yourself! If any of you’d like to have the program, just ask for it. If any of you programmers out there would like the source code (its in C++), then ask me for it specifically.
Anyway, Fractals are quite a bit of fun, so happy ‘Fractaling’, and Cheers!
