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Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory. One way that fractals are different from finite geometric figures is how they scale . Doubling the edge lengths of a filled polygon multiplies its area by four, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old side length) raised to the power of two (the conventional dimension ...
Fractal physiology refers to the study of physiological systems using complexity science methods, such as chaos measure, entropy, and fractal dimensions.The underlying assumption is that biological systems are complex and exhibit non-linear patterns of activity, and that characterizing that complexity (using dedicated mathematical approaches) is useful to understand, and make inferences and ...
The main catalyst for the development of chaos theory was the electronic computer. Much of the mathematics of chaos theory involves the repeated iteration of simple mathematical formulas, which would be impractical to do by hand. Electronic computers made these repeated calculations practical, while figures and images made it possible to ...
[23] [24] Visual patterns in nature find explanations in chaos theory, fractals, logarithmic spirals, topology and other mathematical patterns. For example, L-systems form convincing models of different patterns of tree growth. [19] The laws of physics apply the abstractions of mathematics to the real world, often as if it were perfect.
Starting in the 1950s Benoit Mandelbrot and others have studied self-similarity of fractal curves, and have applied theory of fractals to modelling natural phenomena. Self-similarity occurs, and analysis of these patterns has found fractal curves in such diverse fields as economics, fluid mechanics, geomorphology, human physiology and linguistics.
The book sparked widespread popular interest in fractals and contributed to chaos theory and other fields of science and mathematics. Mandelbrot also put his ideas to work in cosmology. He offered in 1974 a new explanation of Olbers' paradox (the "dark night sky" riddle), demonstrating the consequences of fractal theory as a sufficient, but not ...
The Koch snowflake (also known as the Koch curve, Koch star, or Koch island [1] [2]) is a fractal curve and one of the earliest fractals to have been described. It is based on the Koch curve, which appeared in a 1904 paper titled "On a Continuous Curve Without Tangents, Constructible from Elementary Geometry" [3] by the Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch.
More than a decade after Richardson completed his work, Benoit Mandelbrot developed a new branch of mathematics, fractal geometry, to describe just such non-rectifiable complexes in nature as the infinite coastline. [10] His own definition of the new figure serving as the basis for his study is: [11] I coined fractal from the Latin adjective ...