Fractals
Pictured: A Famous Fractal - The Mandelbrot Set
A Fractals Unit for Elementary and Middle School Students
That Adults are Free to Enjoy
Introduction
Why study fractals?
What's so hot about
fractals, anyway?
Making fractals
Sierpinski Triangle
Using Java
Math questions
Sierpinski Meets Pascal
Jurassic Park Fractal
Using JAVA
It grows complex
Real first iteration
Encoding the fractal
World's Largest
Koch Snowflake
Using Java
Infinite perimeter
Finite area
Anti-Snowflake
Using Java
Fractal Properties
Self-similarity
Fractional dimension
Formation by iteration
For Teachers
Teachers' Notes
Teacher-to-Teacher
Comments
My fractals mail
Send fractals mail
Fractals on the Web
The Math Forum
Other Math Lessons
by Cynthia Lanius
Awards
This Site has received
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What are Fractals?
They're everywhere, those bright, weird, beautiful shapes called fractals. But what are they, really?
Fractals are geometric figures, just like rectangles, circles and squares, but fractals have special properties that those figures do not have.
There's lots of information on the Web about fractals, but most of it is either just pretty pictures or very high-level mathematics. So this fractals site is for kids, to help them understand what the weird pictures are all about - that it's math - and that it's fun!
Teachers: Every lesson has a print version for classroom use.
 Fractals make "Cool Science" last year's 11th-iteration version.
Elementary School Champions! Third grade students in Ms. Renner's class at Alief ISD's Chambers Elementary in Houston, TX made this this 9th iteration Jurassic Park Fractal. Wow!
And look at what preschoolers do! |
URL http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/
Copyright 1996-2004 by Cynthia Lanius
Reset to 1 on 1/19/04