Fractals are really

beautiful mathematics

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Who started ?

When Benoit B.Mandelbrot in 1975 published

his først book about fractals, the interest
increased rapidly. Few years later (1978)
came his book “The Fractal Geometri of
Nature” .

This book is by no way

easy to read, and you
should be well skilled in
mathematics and its
formulations to get a
profound advantage from
reading this book. With
it’s 468 pages an
extensive job waits for you !

If you prefeer a more spontanous meeting with beautyful fractals and less
heavy mathematics, the book The Beauty of Fractals is recommended. It was
publishet in 1986, with 199 pages and 185 figures, many in colour.

Where can you just play with fractals ?

You have a fine opportunity for doing this by downloading a freeware program
called Fractal Forge. You find it in Google, just try this :

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Fractovia - Fractal Forge Fractal Forge v.2.8.2 is freeware. You can use it to draw your
own fractal images, and explore Mandelbrot Set's branches. Now it's easier and
faster than ... http://www.fractovia.org/uberto/ –

When you have got in on your screen, just click in upper left corner and then on
File and Open file. Then you get 30 different fractals you can play with. Chose
one of them, and Open it. Wait for some seconds, and then click in upper right
corner. This should bring you a menu, and click on Data. Now you can enter into
the formula, change iterations etc. etc., and then click on Start to see the result.

Do you just want to look at beautiful fractals ?

An excellent collection can be found in Sekino’s Fractal Gallery, try it on

the address . http://www.willamette.edu/~sekino/fractal/annex.htm

Take a look at four of them :

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The computation of fractals
The simple formula, first used by Benoit B.Mandelbrot was this :
Z = Z2 + C

Seemingly very simple, but it contains possibilities for an extremely complicted

output when given interation possibility, and it has also an imaginary part. This
imaginar part involve the use of complex numbers in C, in the terms of “i”, which
equals the square root of -1.
Complex numbers follow their own rules that sometimes differ from those of real
numbers. Because of their
unique properties, they are
often used in fractals that are
graphed in complex planes.

The so called Mandelbrot set is

one example of a fractal that is
graphed in the complex plan.

Looking closely with a

magnifying glass along the
periferical border (sharp
picture), one will see just the
same structure as in the main
picture, a unik kind of a
repetition.

Julia sets also exist in the complex plane,

where the horizontal axis represent the real
numbers, and the vertical axis represents
imginary numbers. An assortment of Julia
sets here sourrounds the
Mandelbrotndelndelbrot set.

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In the equation (x=x2+ C ), the C for Julia
sets are more sophisticated, having a
complex number involved. This imply
infinite possibilities for the developing of
fractals.

The two fractal examples shown (right)

was achieved by different values for the C in the equation, and shows what
influence this had for the image of the fractal
pictures.

More thrilling pictures can be achieved by laying

in colours , and the colour distribution will
depend on how many iterations used.

Flashbacks

Mandelbrot’s set, discovered and joined in the therm “Fractals” in the early
1970’s is one of the most beautiful and profound discoveries in the history of
mathematics. Not since Pythagoras and the Greeks (ca. 600 B.C) who
documented all their mathematical breakthrough has there been such a
revolutionary discovery.

Fractals were not discovered until the invention of computors. It was virtually
impossible to discover fractals before the advent of the computor, because of
their complexity and gargantuan output.

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Some geometric figures in a basic form was given in 1918 by Gaston Julia. In
the 1960’s early experiments with computor graphics, primarely at MIT, gave
some more advanced figures. The interest in fractals now increased rapidly.

In 1992, I quite unexpected discovered an article in a nordic mathematical

periodical (NORMAT) with the heading : “Matematiska bilder av fraktaler och
kaos” (Mathematical pictures of fractals and chaos) written by Hans Wallin,
Anders Fãllstrøm and Mats Wallin. Hans Wallin was then a math processor by
the University of Umeå in Sweeden. Laterly he retired (professor emeritus), now
still going strong. He happens to be my only sweedish second cousin, but I never
met him. We have only sent and got Christmas greeting for some years, and
Hans has given me important family relatives information His son Mats is a
professor of theoretical physics at KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), in
Stockholm.

I managed several years later to get this article (13 p, 23 images) sent from
KTH, and could study what was presentet as new image materials for fractals,
intended as a contribution to the matematics and phyics training in the sixth -
former scool.
Programs for three experimental tasks was given, written in the program
language Turbo Pascal 4.0. My curiosity for such an opportunity lead me to put
“new life” into my IBM Aptiva from 1994, and try to download the language
Turbo Pascal 6.0 , which I had accessible. I did’nt succeed , don’t know why.

Instead, the sections concerning Real iteration and Complex iteration was very
instructive, and had references to several typical images/figures. The computor
for the more simple figures was an IBM PS2, but for more advanced images a
bigger computor (Apollo) was used.

Concerning Real Iterations this article shows an examples with the following text
given :

This picture shows what

happens for r=0.7 The row x0 ,
x| x2 ...... converge to x*

The point x* is called an

attractor to the polynom
1 – rx2

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Concerning Complex iteration , the iteration of the polynom z2 + c , where c is a
constant, and z is a complex number z= x + iy, where x and y are real numbers
and i2 = -1.

This picture illustrate the Julia amount for the equation

c = -0.74543 + 0.11301i

The Julia amount is related to pictures in the physics , illustrating magnetism.

This picture shows an enlargement

of the framed part in picture 13

A picture describing chaos from

the physics.

A differential equation here describe the

movement for a pendelum beeing exposed to
both damped and energetic forces

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Skien, 20.februar 2010

Kjell W. Tveten