The infinitely complex

Fractals
Jennifer Chubb
Deans Seminar
November 14, 2006
Sides available at http://home.gwu.edu/~jchubb
Fractals are about all about infinity
The way they look,
The way theyre created,
The way we study and measure them

underlying all of these are infinite processes.


Fractal Gallery
3-Dimensional
Cantor Set
Fractal Gallery
Koch Snowflake

Animation


Fractal Gallery
Sierpinskis Carpet







Menger Sponge





Fractal Gallery
The Julia Set

Fractal Gallery

The Mandelbrot Set


Dynamically Generated Fractals and Chaos
Chaotic Pendulum
http://www.myphysicslab.com/pendulum2.html

Fractal Gallery
Henon Attractor

http://bill.srnr.arizona.edu/classes/195b/henon.htm

Fractal Gallery
Tinkerbell Attractor
and basin of attraction

Fractal Gallery
Lorenz
Attractor


Fractal Gallery
Rossler
Attractor
Fractal Gallery
Wada Basin
Fractal Gallery
Fractal Gallery
Romanesco
a cross between
broccoli and
cauliflower



What is a fractal?
Self similarity
As we blow up parts of the
picture, we see the
same thing over and
over again



What is a fractal?
So, heres another example of infinite self
similarity



and so on But is this a fractal?
What is a fractal?
No exact mathematical definition.
Most agree a fractal is a geometric object that
has most or all of the following properties
Approximately self-similar
Fine structure on arbitrarily small scales
Not easily described in terms of familiar geometric language
Has a simple and recursive definition
Its fractal dimension exceeds its topological dimension
Dimension
Topological Dimension
Points (or disconnected collections of them) have
topological dimension 0.
Lines and curves have topological dimension 1.
2-D things (think filled in square) have topological
dimension 2.
3-D things (a solid cube) have topological dimension 3.


Dimension
Topological Dimension 0

The Cantor Set
(3D version as well)

Dimension
Topological Dimension 1

Koch Snowflake

Chaotic Pendulum, Henon, and Tinkerbell
attractors

Boundary of Mandelbrot Set
Dimension
Topological Dimension 2


Lorenz Attractor




Rossler Attractor
Dimension
What is fractal dimension?
There are different kinds:
Hausdorff dimension how does the number of balls it takes to
cover the fractal scale with the size of the balls?
Box-counting dimension how does the number of boxes it
takes to cover the fractal scale with the size of the boxes?
Information dimension how does the average information
needed to identify an occupied box scale?
Correlation dimension calculated from the number of points
used to generate the picture, and the number of pairs of points
within a distance of each other.
This list is not exhaustive!
Box-counting dimension
Computing the box-counting
dimension











1
3 log
3 log

13093 . 1
9 log
12 log

17457 . 1
27 log
48 log

and so
on
1.26186

Hausdorff Dimension of some fractals
Cantor Set 0.6309
Henon Map 1.26
Koch Snowflake 1.2619
2D Cantor Dust 1.2619
Appolonian Gasket 1.3057
Sierpinski Carpet 1.8928
3D Cantor Dust 1.8928
Boundary of Mandelbrot Set 2 (!)
Lorenz Attractor 2.06
Menger Sponge 2.7268

Thank you!