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Back in the 1960's, a
French mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot started thinking
about simple pretty simple: How long is the coast of
Britain? Sure, it seems easy enough... But, think
about how you'd really measure it... Would you fly over
the coast in an airplane and measure how far you flew? Or
would you take a ruler (or meter stick) and get down on your
hands and knees and crawl around the edge? It would be
different!
In 1975, he made up
the word "fractal" because he thought these figures would look
fractured or broken up. It wasn't until he had a computer
that he could SEE a picture of what he'd been thinking about!
To learn about what a fractal is,
check out my lesson:
The Math
of Fractals |
