next Fractal Dimension (Next Section)
up Chaos in the Classroom (Cover Page)
previous Playing the chaos game in (Previous Section)

BU Math Home Page

Self-similarity

One of the basic properties of fractal images is the notion of self-similarity. This idea is easy to explain using the Sierpinski triangle. Note that S may be decomposed into 3 congruent figures, each of which is exactly 1/2 the size of S! See Figure 7. That is to say, if we magnify any of the 3 pieces of S shown in Figure 7 by a factor of 2, we obtain an exact replica of S. That is, S consists of 3 self-similar copies of itself, each with magnification factor 2.


Figure 7: Magnifying the Sierpinski triangle

We can look deeper into S and see further copies of S. For the Sierpinski triangle also consists of 9 self-similar copies of itself, each with magnification factor 4. Or we can chop S into 27 self-similar pieces, each with magnification factor 8. In general, we may divide S into 3^n self-similar pieces, each of which is congruent, and each of which may be maginified by a factor of 2^n to yield the entire figure. This type of self-similarity at all scales is a hallmark of the images known as fractals.



next Fractal Dimension (Next Section)
up Chaos in the Classroom (Cover Page)
previous Playing the chaos game in (Previous Section)

BU Math Home Page



Robert L. Devaney
Sun Apr 2 14:31:18 EDT 1995