Liz Blakenship and Daniel Ashlock's taxonomy of fractalsĮven if you're a die-hard fractals fan, what you might not know is that there are many different types of fractals out there, and they don't all look like the ones above. They are truly fractal in the fact that more and more detail can be revealed the closer to the surface you travel."Įither way, they're incredibly beautiful.
"The formulae effectively fold, scale, rotate or flip space. "The 3D fractals are generated by iterative formulae whereby the output of one iteration forms the input for the next," Beddard told My Modern Met. To show his appreciation, UK physicist Tom Beddard decided to create digital renderings of 3D Fabergé eggs covered in these detailed fractal patterns. He's also made his formulae and illustrations open to the public on his website so anyone can create their own.įractals are patterns that repeat at every scale - creating never-ending swirls, lines, and curves that have been loved in the natural, math, and art worlds for centuries. He now tweaks his data to make more of these recognisable shakes, in order to help share "the power of mathematics" with the world. For example, I found boat and animals accidentally," he told Science Friday. But I don’t know anything about the results of the programs before running them. "I change the formulae to find better shapes. The emerging shapes were always beautiful, but he began to realise that some of them also randomly represented real-life objects. Iranian arist Hamid Naderi Yeganeh uses mathematical formulae to create intricate, computer-generated illustations - his program can create thousands a day. Hamid Naderi Yeganeh's computer illustrations You don’t have to keep referring to a diagram. "You can get to drawing much sooner," he says. He chooses to draw with maths because of the simplicity of the patterns, he told Alex Bellos over at The Guardian in 2014.
Simon Beck is a mapmaker by trade, but his passion for art inspired him to create these epic 'snowscapes' in the European Alps.Įach one takes 11 hours and Beck makes them using nothing but a compass and his snowshoes, and most of them depict mathematical formation such as a Koch snowflake or a Sierpinski triangle, which you can see below. And with the help of computers, they've taken things to a whole new level.īelow are seven of our favourite recent adventures in maths and art. Escher's mathematically accurate prints, and you'll realise that the purity and patterns found within numbers and forumulae can transform the world into a more beautiful place.īut it's not just historically - even today, mathematicians and artists are bringing their skills together to create some truly beautiful works. Just take a look at Leonardo Da Vinci's geometric sketches inside Luca Pacioli's book, De Divina Proportione (The Divine Proportion), or M.