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What are Fractals?

This is a very basic article to illustrate what fractals are and give a few examples of different formulas.

frac·tal (frāk'təl) n. A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry. Fractals are used especially in computer modeling of irregular patterns and structures in nature.

This is an example of the Julia formula. Notice each time I zoomed in the basic structure has not changed.

Next is an example of the Mandelbrot formula, named for Benoît Mandelbrot, a mathematician known as the "father of fractal geometry"

This is the Koch snowflake, one of the earliest fractals to be described by Helge von Koch in 1904.

And last is the Sierpiński triangle named for Waclaw Sierpiński.

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