Cynthia Lanius

Fractal Properties

Fractal Dimension

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   Awards     This Site has received

A point has no dimensions - no length, no width, no height. That dot is obviously way too big to really represent a point. But we'll live with it, if we all just agree what a point really is.   A line has one dimension - length. It has no width and no height, but infinite length. Again, this model of a line is really not very good, but until we learn how to draw a line with 0 width and infinite length, it'll have to do.   A plane has two dimensions - length and width, no depth. It's an absolutely flat tabletop extending out both ways to infinity.   Space, a huge empty box, has three dimensions, length, width, and depth, extending to infinity in all three directions.   Obviously this isn't a good representation of 3-D. Besides its size, it's just a hexagon drawn to fool you into thinking it's a box.    Fractals can have fractional (or fractal) dimension. A fractal might have dimension of 1.6 or 2.4. How could that be? Let's investigate below.

Let's look further at what we mean by dimension. Take a self-similar figure like a line segment, and double its length. Doubling the length gives two copies of the original segment.
Take another self-similar figure, this time a square 1 unit by 1 unit. Now multiply the length and width by 2. How many copies of the original size square do you get? Doubling the sides gives four copies.
Take a 1 by 1 by 1 cube and double its length, width, and height. How many copies of the original size cube do you get? Doubling the side gives eight copies.

Let's organize our information into a table.

Figure	Dimension	No. of Copies
Line segment	1	2 = 21
Square	2	4 = 22
Cube	3	8 = 23

Do you see a pattern? It appears that the dimension is the exponent - and it is! So when we double the sides and get a similar figure, we write the number of copies as a power of 2 and the exponent will be the dimension.

Let's add that as a row to the table.

Figure	Dimension	No. of Copies
Line Segment	1	2 = 21
Square	2	4 = 22
Cube	3	8 = 23
Doubling Similarity	d	n = 2d

We can use this to figure out the dimension of the Sierpinski Triangle because when you double the length of the sides, you get another Sierpinski Triangle similar to the first.

Start with a Sierpinski triangle of 1-inch sides. Double the length of the sides. Now how many copies of the original triangle do you have? Remember that the black triangles are holes, so we can't count them.

Doubling the sides gives us three copies, so 3 = 2^d, where d = the dimension.

But wait, 2 = 2¹, and 4 = 2², so what number could this be? It has to be somewhere between 1 and 2, right? Let's add this to our table.

Figure	Dimension	No. of Copies
Line Segment	1	2 = 21
Sierpinski's Triangle	?	3 = 2?
Square	2	4 = 22
Cube	3	8 = 23
Doubling Similarity	d	n = 2d

So the dimension of Sierpinski's Triangle is between 1 and 2. Do you think you could find a better answer? Use a calculator with an exponent key (the key usually looks like this ^ ). Use 2 as a base and experiment with different exponents between 1 and 2 to see how close you can come. For example, try 1.1. Type 2^1.1 and you get 2.143547. I'll bet you can get closer to 3 than that. Try 2^1.2 and you get 2.2974. That's closer to 3, but you can do better.

Okay, I got you started; now find the exponent that gets you closest to 3, and that's its dimension. Email me your answer if you want.

lanius@rice.edu

That's how fractals can have fractional dimension.

Note 2: Is there anything special about us doubling the lengths here? Could you have tripled them and derived the formula as well? Why don't you investigate by trying it.

Note 3: Robert Devaney has more information on fractal dimension.

Note 4: You may obtain a print version of this page.

Copyright 1997-2007 Cynthia Lanius