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Fractal patterns have been modeled extensively, albeit within a range of scales rather than infinitely, owing to the practical limits of physical time and space. Models may simulate theoretical fractals or natural phenomena with fractal features.
The usage of the word "gasket" to refer to the Sierpiński triangle refers to gaskets such as are found in motors, and which sometimes feature a series of holes of decreasing size, similar to the fractal; this usage was coined by Benoit Mandelbrot, who thought the fractal looked similar to "the part that prevents leaks in motors". [23]
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.
According to Benoit Mandelbrot, "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff-Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension." [1] Presented here is a list of fractals, ordered by increasing Hausdorff dimension, to illustrate what it means for a fractal to have a low or a high dimension.
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.
A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, [1] or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated like a wallpaper design. Any of the senses may directly observe patterns.
The theoretical fractal dimension for this fractal is 5/3 ≈ 1.67; its empirical fractal dimension from box counting analysis is ±1% [8] using fractal analysis software. A fractal dimension is an index for characterizing fractal patterns or sets by quantifying their complexity as a ratio of the change in detail to the change in scale.
Coastlines are less definite in their construction than idealized fractals such as the Mandelbrot set because they are formed by various natural events that create patterns in statistically random ways, whereas idealized fractals are formed through repeated iterations of simple, formulaic sequences. [9]