Fractals: How They Are Self-Similarity

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Fractals are all around us, in our lungs, kidneys, blood vessels, plants, in the clouds, in the tress, in the landscape, and even in our very heartbeats. But what exactly is a fractal? In simple terms a fractal is something that has self-similarity. That means that as you zoom in and out the object looks the same.
Fractals are all around us in nature. Fractals are in the clouds, in the trees and in our lungs, livers and veins. A team of people went into a protected forest and cut down a few trees (with permission of course!) and took measurements of the trees. Based on those measurements they could see that there were constant repeating patterns of where the branches split off and the thickness of the branches. They saw that this extended not just for single trees, but for the entirety of the forest.
Classical mathematics ran on the basic assumption that everything is regular and has smooth edges. That is until Benoit Mandelbrot came around. He saw mathematical equations as pictures in his head. After teaching in France for a time, he went and worked for IBM. There was an issue with transmitting data over phone lines and decided to plot the noise data. The graph was the same regardless if the time interval was a minute an hour, a day or even a week. Benoit Mandelbrot was one of the first to start experimenting with fractals. He created a set of numbers now known as the Mandelbrot set by using a computer to run an equation millions of times and turned the numbers into points on the graph. He discovered that when you zoomed in on the series after it had been plotted, the images created would be repeated. He later went on to write a book on fractals appearance in nature.
A programmer by the name of Loren Carpenter came across ...

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... has small bumps or grooves in it that can be created using fractals.
Fractals can also be used in animation. As stated earlier it’s possible to create mountains and also entire planets using fractals. Fractals were first introduced to the film industry in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where the entire planet that they flew over was created using fractals. In one scene of the new Star Wars movie; Anakin and Obi Wan are facing off inside of an active volcano. The lava in the scene was created using fractals. The artist add swirls to the 3D model of the initial lava spout and shrunk them. They repeated the process over and over again, layering each one until the entire background was made of fractal swirls.
Fractals have become an important part in video game creation today. It can be used to create terrain, forests, entire worlds, textures and special effects.

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