Cynthia Lanius

How to Make

The World's Largest Jurassic Park Fractal

Table of Contents    Introduction   Why study fractals?     What's so hot about     fractals, anyway?   Making fractals     Sierpinski Triangle          Using Java          Math questions          Sierpinski Meets Pascal     Jurassic Park Fractal          Using JAVA          It grows complex          Real first iteration          Encoding the fractal          World's Largest     Koch Snowflake          Using Java          Infinite perimeter          Finite area          Anti-Snowflake             Using Java   Fractal Properties     Self-similarity     Fractional dimension     Formation by iteration   For Teachers     Teachers' Notes     Teacher-to-Teacher   Comments     My fractals mail     Send fractals mail   Fractals on the Web     The Math Forum   Other Math Lessons     by Cynthia Lanius

Since you can't make the fractal by paper folding for more than about seven iterations, we are going to use a very important feature of the fractal to create a much larger one starting with the fourth iteration. Take a look at the real first and second iterations above. Notice the second iteration is made up of two copies of the first. Now if you inspect the third iteration above, you will see that it is made up of two copies of the second iteration. In fact, every iteration is formed with two copies of the previous one. We are going to use this feature to make further iterations beyond what we can make with paper folding. Let's start by making a real fourth iteration, what the book calls the first. (Wow, I wish they hadn't done that!) Follow the directions and make two copies of the book's First Iteration. See the next step below.

Tape the two copies together to form the next iteration. It's a puzzle to figure out how you will rotate the copies to make them fit together correctly.

What would you add to that figure to make the iteration below? Try it and email me to let me know you've successfully completed it.

Class Project: Have everyone in the class make a First Iteration of the fractal (4 folds). Combine all the fractals to see how large an iteration you can make. Email me your iteration number, and I'll post it on the page. We'll see who can make the World's Largest Jurassic Park Fractal.

Copyright 1997-2007 Cynthia Lanius