The club Mindscape is aimed at improving the creative thinking skills of students. The word “Mindscape” means the creative part of one’s brain. The club screens documentaries on both technical and non-technical topics and organize related activities for the students to think over the idea presented and act.
On <date>, we screened the documentary Benoit Mandelbrot – Hunting the Hidden Dimension. It was on an interesting area called Fractals.
Fractals are basically self-similar patterns. Self-similar here means, if one looks at it from far away and if he looks at it from very close, he’ll see the same pattern. If you zoom in infinite x times, the same patterns reappear. Intriguing right? That’s what I thought too.
One might think that such patterns can only be imagined but it is not so. The nature is full of them – the trees, the mountains, snowflakes; even the human body has got fractals in it. You just have to look close and with the right mind. 😉
The Mandelbrot set is the most famous Fractal. And it is named after the mathematician who found it – Benoit Mandelbrot.
Pictures: wikipedia
The Koch Snowflake is another good example.
Don’t think such patterns are of no use and are just fancy. Scientists have found important applications and mathematical equations for natures designs that, till the discovery of fractals, were thought to be random. Huge advances have taken place in the area of computer graphics with the use of fractals. People can now create 3D environments within seconds. Even making 2D motion pictures used to take enormous amount of drawing and pasting in the olden times, but with fractals everything is a childs game now.
Next time you observe something in nature try if you can spot a fractal in them. 🙂
Everyday Mischief 