Re: Fractals and Nature, The Hidden Dimension

Interesting show on Nova dealing with fractals, a mathmatical method for describing complex shapes like mountain ranges, trees, leaves, feathers, shells, evolution, etc.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

My son's fractal site: http://www.hpdz.net/index.htm
Take a peek.

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Old Dude

Oldie but goodie Nova program! Learning algebra has its benefits.

Quote
Vince
Oldie but goodie Nova program! Learning algebra has its benefits.

Maybe a summer re-run.I haven't seen it before. It was produced in 2008 according to the DVD, although the math was "discovered" in the 70's and 80's.

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

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Frank Furter

Quote
Vince
Oldie but goodie Nova program! Learning algebra has its benefits.

Maybe a summer re-run.I haven't seen it before. It was produced in 2008 according to the DVD, although the math was "discovered" in the 70's and 80's.

In the early 80s I read a Scientific American article that described how to explore the Mandelbrot set, and gave the algebra necessary. It didn't give the actual programming steps, just the basic algebra, and I had to figure it out:

z^2+C

It's so simple and may explain everything? Well I did find out that an Apple II Plus took about 7 days to compute, at 6 colors, a large box around the actual set. If you tried to zoom in on it would have taken weeks...but you know how impatient teens are, imagine that when you're just barely out of your teens!

I have many programs I wrote around the Mandelbrot, not knowing I started at sunset and then realized the sun was coming up and the bugs weren't out, but it was great, I had oceans below iteration 6, and lakes between iteration 100-120, and the infinity stuff (the actual set) was randomly shaded (proprietary info, LOL).

It was fun to learn how to shade one pixel to the next to make things look like mountains. Quite another to actually hike the mountains 20 years later.

For any Sci Fi fans out there:
I don't recall the details, but Mandelbrot's original set was included in the story line of an Arthur C. Clarke novel back in 1990:
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Grand-Banks-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0553072226