A Fractal Introduction
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Hi everyone - I've finally joined this list, and have been lurking
for about a week to learn the culture a bit before introducing myself. And it's finally time to do so, because I'll be in Santa Fe tonight giving a talk for the Science Caf? series put on by the Santa Fe Alliance for Science. It's from 6-8 PM, tonight (Monday) at the Georgia O'keeffe Museum Education Annex, at 123 Grant St. The title of my talk is "Zooming into Infinity: A Fractal Adventure." It's a free show, so if you want to see it get there early to make sure you get a seat. More info at: http://www.sfafs.org/sciencecafes.asp But I'm not really here to plug the show, I just wanted to introduce myself, and I thought this was a good opportunity in case some of you wanted to come to the show tonight to get a bit more detailed glimpse of who I am and what I'm up to (see, a fractal intro, available at different scales :) So, I'm the Executive Director of this small but exciting educational nonprofit, the Fractal Foundation, but most people just call me the Fractal Man. And I do talk a lot about fractals, to lots of people, everywhere I go. In fact, over the past 4 years, I've taught fractals to over 21,000 people, (roughly 12,000 children and 9,000 adults) all over New Mexico. Given that there's ~326,000 students in NM schools, we're now 3.6% of the way to Leaving No Child Unfractalled! And this is so much fun... whenever I go into a classroom and teach the kids about fractals, they get so excited! People love fractals, and we use the beauty and excitement of fractals to inspire interest in science, math and art. I'm always impressed by how well young people grasp these concepts, but it makes sense because humans are so visual, and because the world around us is full of fractal patterns, which means our visual systems have evolved to perceive these patterns. Oh yes - my scientific background, to continue introducing myself, is in neuroscience, specializing in the visual system. I don't do much direct neuroscience research anymore, because I find I make much more of an impact teaching. I also use the knowledge I have about how we perceive the world to inform my art and help me design incredibly beautiful visual stimuli that are effective at a large range of scales and different lighting conditions. The art medium I'm best known for is hot-air ballooning, and you can see pictures of my fractal-inspired tiedyed balloons at http://www.SkyDyes.net . Ballooning itself is an amazing performance artform, where we throw ourselves into a chaotic system, the sky, and the more we understand about the complex dynamics of the atmosphere, the more power and control we have to navigate where we wish to fly. It's a very subtle, very beautiful activity, completely unlike the brute-force flying you do with an airplane. There's lots more to share, and I'd be happy to come up and do a talk sometime for Friam, about the applications of fractals in science, engineering and education. I also want to invite you all to the most fun public shows I do, "First Friday Fractals" at the Natural History Museum Planetarium down here in Albuquerque, coming up again this Friday, Feb 1st, at 6,7 and 8PM. This show has been a runaway success, having sold out all 51 consecutive First Friday showings for over a year now. It's really thrilling to have such an unprecedented turnout for a math and science show, but that's a testament to the incredible beauty of fractals. And the fulldome immersive video environment in the dome is a most dramatic way to enjoy the experience of zooming deeeep into algebraic fractals. I choreograph the zooms to original music, which has the soldout audience cheering, and makes me feel like the rarest of creatures - a mathematical rockstar. Fun! But if you want to come, make sure to buy tickets online at least a day in advance, or you might not get in. (See the website below for ticket info.) So I hope to meet you all sometime, and I look forward to getting better connected with the Santa Fe community. Oh - one more thing... I'll be up in Santa Fe again on Feb 5th, which is Math & Science Day at the State Legislature. Come by if you can, say hi, see our display of student-made fractals, and show your support for math and science education. Thanks! -Jonathan Wolfe, Ph.D. Executive Director http://www.FractalFoundation.org Next First Friday Fractals show: February 1st Fractals are SMART: Science, Math & Art! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20080128/58e023a9/attachment.html |
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hi jonathan,
we met at a tech mixer during the holidays and i sent you a copy of my book, the end of management. just checking to see that you got it. thanks. all the best, lanny lanny goodman, ceo management technologies inc. strategic planning & self-managing company design 414 1?2 central ave SE suite 4 albuquerque NM 87102 505.884.7300 www.lannygoodman.com On 1/28/08 10:26 AM, "Jonathan Wolfe" <jonathan at fractalfoundation.org> wrote: > Hi everyone - I've finally joined this list, and have been lurking for about a > week to learn the culture a bit before introducing myself. And it's finally > time to do so, because I'll be in Santa Fe tonight giving a talk for the > Science Caf? series put on by the Santa Fe Alliance for Science. It's from 6-8 > PM, tonight (Monday) at the Georgia O'keeffe Museum Education Annex, at 123 > Grant St. The title of my talk is "Zooming into Infinity: A Fractal > Adventure." It's a free show, so if you want to see it get there early to make > sure you get a seat. More info at: http://www.sfafs.org/sciencecafes.asp > But I'm not really here to plug the show, I just wanted to introduce myself, > and I thought this was a good opportunity in case some of you wanted to come > to the show tonight to get a bit more detailed glimpse of who I am and what > I'm up to (see, a fractal intro, available at different scales :) > > So, I'm the Executive Director of this small but exciting educational > nonprofit, the Fractal Foundation, but most people just call me the Fractal > Man. And I do talk a lot about fractals, to lots of people, everywhere I go. > In fact, over the past 4 years, I've taught fractals to over 21,000 people, > (roughly 12,000 children and 9,000 adults) all over New Mexico. Given that > there's ~326,000 students in NM schools, we're now 3.6% of the way to Leaving > No Child Unfractalled! And this is so much fun... whenever I go into a > classroom and teach the kids about fractals, they get so excited! People love > fractals, and we use the beauty and excitement of fractals to inspire interest > in science, math and art. I'm always impressed by how well young people grasp > these concepts, but it makes sense because humans are so visual, and because > the world around us is full of fractal patterns, which means our visual > systems have evolved to perceive these patterns. Oh yes - my scientific > background, to continue introducing myself, is in neuroscience, specializing > in the visual system. I don't do much direct neuroscience research anymore, > because I find I make much more of an impact teaching. I also use the > knowledge I have about how we perceive the world to inform my art and help me > design incredibly beautiful visual stimuli that are effective at a large range > of scales and different lighting conditions. The art medium I'm best known for > is hot-air ballooning, and you can see pictures of my fractal-inspired tiedyed > balloons at http://www.SkyDyes.net . Ballooning itself is an amazing > performance artform, where we throw ourselves into a chaotic system, the sky, > and the more we understand about the complex dynamics of the atmosphere, the > more power and control we have to navigate where we wish to fly. It's a very > subtle, very beautiful activity, completely unlike the brute-force flying you > do with an airplane. > > There's lots more to share, and I'd be happy to come up and do a talk sometime > for Friam, about the applications of fractals in science, engineering and > education. > I also want to invite you all to the most fun public shows I do, "First Friday > Fractals" at the Natural History Museum Planetarium down here in Albuquerque, > coming up again this Friday, Feb 1st, at 6,7 and 8PM. This show has been a > runaway success, having sold out all 51 consecutive First Friday showings for > over a year now. It's really thrilling to have such an unprecedented turnout > for a math and science show, but that's a testament to the incredible beauty > of fractals. And the fulldome immersive video environment in the dome is a > most dramatic way to enjoy the experience of zooming deeeep into algebraic > fractals. I choreograph the zooms to original music, which has the soldout > audience cheering, and makes me feel like the rarest of creatures - a > mathematical rockstar. Fun! But if you want to come, make sure to buy tickets > online at least a day in advance, or you might not get in. (See the website > below for ticket info.) > > So I hope to meet you all sometime, and I look forward to getting better > connected with the Santa Fe community. Oh - one more thing... I'll be up in > Santa Fe again on Feb 5th, which is Math & Science Day at the State > Legislature. Come by if you can, say hi, see our display of student-made > fractals, and show your support for math and science education. > Thanks! > > > -Jonathan Wolfe, Ph.D. > Executive Director > http://www.FractalFoundation.org > Next First Friday Fractals show: February 1st > Fractals are SMART: Science, Math & Art! > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20080128/ad422b9c/attachment.html |
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Re: [FRIAM] A Fractal IntroductionI thought this might be of interest to some of you.
When I was in Costa Rica in December I had occasion more than once to observe colonies of tiny ants as they travelled in slightly curving lines up and down walls. These were very small ants, each one not much bigger than a millimeter or two in length. Their small size and the fact they traveled across walls closely together in long lines made them amenable to close observation. Generally, their trajectories appeared to match very nearly the fastest routes from sources of food to unknown destinations. The ants traveled to and from a discernable food source - a source which I could usually locate by following their lines, and in fact a couple of times the food was bits of egg I had dropped on my kitchen counter! Their destination in the direction away from the food source was unknown to me, however. In observing the ants as they travelled up and down in lines, each individual ant touching all others briefly as they passed each other in their respective up and down lines, I struck upon a hypothesis: 1. Individual ants tend to travel more slowly than single file groups traveling within touching range of each other. This, faster speed for groups, I speculated, would be due to a "drafting effect" that allowed following ants to save energy in travelling behind leaders and that the groups as a "unit" would on average travel faster than individuals traveling on their own. This idea was of course inspired by the faster traveling times which pelotons of cyclists can achieve over traveling times of individuals. Whenever one can observe a human effect in a natural setting it tends to validate the effect as being independent of human psychology and motivations, and so to observe optimization by drafting among ants would be some evidence that the collective optimization of cyclist's speed due to drafting is a universal physical principle. In the end my data (rough and incomplete due to eventual boredom in tabulating the figures), which is attached in the pdf file, did not lead me to conclude any faster traveling times among groups of ants. The only thing my data could tell me with any degree of certainty was that it took longer for the ants to travel up the wall than it took them to travel down. This can, it seems, be accounted for by the slowing effect of gravity. Basically I would need to take more data over longer distances to see if any conclusions could be drawn about the average times of groups, which still may be true, despite the data I gathered which shows an average of 9.375 seconds for the individual ants traveling down the 11 inches in my observation window, compared to 10.1 seconds for the groups traveling down. The reason it may still be true that the groups travel faster on average is that the total number of ants in the "group" data set is much higher than the total number of ants in the "individual" ant data set; data would have to be compared for the same total number of ants, which I did not do. This would need to be done for more conclusive data. However, despite a lack of any conclusive evidence of a drafting effect among these ants, it was interesting to see how the two lines of ants involved each ant touching each other as they crossed paths. I came to speculate on a that this touching is a mechanism for optimizing the distance (ie finding the shortest distance) between the food source and the end destination (whatever that was). It occurred to me that the very reason the ants travel in two lines back and forth, and touching each other as they pass, is to minimize the distances between ants so that nearly random movements end up, by continuous adjustment, establishing nearly the shortest distance between the food and the destination. I understand that ants use pheromones to map their routes for each other, but I speculate that ants, or at least this type in particular, also optimize distances by smoothing a trajectory by continuous adjustments and shortening of distances between individual ants as they approach each other in passing. The main thing I am suggesting (which may not be new - I haven't researched the point) is that the two traveling lines serve a purpose other than simply one line consisting of food carriers and the other line consisting of those going to the food to pick up a bite of food and return: ie. in other words there may be many ants who do not pick up food but whose sole purpose in traveling the distance, although of course they don't know it, is to ensure the distances traveled are optimized! I thought of a way this could be tested. A group of people, say one hundred of them, all blindfolded, are situated at one end of a field, say 300m long. They cannot see due to their blindfolds, and nor are they allowed to speak to each other, but they can touch each others' backs to know where they are. The idea is for the group to begin walking to the other side of the field. When the first person gets there (the point marked by something that can be felt by touch), he or she then turns around and tries to return to the beginning point. In order to find the route back to the other side, that person can touch each of the others who are still making their way to the far end. In turn, each person, as he/she reaches the far side, must turn around and try to return to the exact beginning point. Similarly, when (if!) each one has returned to the beginning they must return again to the turning point on the other side, and go back and forth. Basically, by touch alone, and not by talking or speaking, I speculate they will eventually, after a lot of bumping and inefficient route taking, establish two smoothly flowing lines where each person touches the other in passing and will find nearly the shortest distance between the two points, even though none of them will know it! Obviously I could be wrong, but that is one way to test what I believe to be occurring among the ants. Hugh Trenchard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20080129/65edf606/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Ants Costa Rica.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 46918 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20080129/65edf606/attachment.pdf |
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On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 11:47:34PM -0800, Hugh Trenchard wrote:
> Basically, by touch alone, and not by talking or speaking, I speculate they will eventually, after a lot of bumping and inefficient route taking, establish two smoothly flowing lines where each person touches the other in passing and will find nearly the shortest distance between the two points, even though none of them will know it! > > Obviously I could be wrong, but that is one way to test what I believe to be occurring among the ants. > > Hugh Trenchard > Also one can try a computer simulation. Not as much fun, perhaps, but easier that trying to draft a few hundred people... -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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In reply to this post by Jonathan Wolfe
Profesor Wolfe
Fractals in Nature Maybe it'd be interesting for you and your students. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uas_HJNAzfw Regards Alfredo Jonathan Wolfe wrote: > Hi everyone - I've finally joined this list, and have been > lurking for about a week to learn the culture a bit before > introducing myself. And it's finally time to do so, because I'll be > in Santa Fe tonight giving a talk for the Science Caf? series put on > by the Santa Fe Alliance for Science. It's from 6-8 PM, tonight > (Monday) at the Georgia O'keeffe Museum Education Annex, at 123 Grant > St. The title of my talk is "Zooming into Infinity: A Fractal > Adventure." It's a free show, so if you want to see it get there > early to make sure you get a seat. More info at: > http://www.sfafs.org/sciencecafes.asp > But I'm not really here to plug the show, I just wanted to > introduce myself, and I thought this was a good opportunity in case > some of you wanted to come to the show tonight to get a bit more > detailed glimpse of who I am and what I'm up to (see, a fractal > intro, available at different scales :) > > So, I'm the Executive Director of this small but exciting > educational nonprofit, the Fractal Foundation, but most people just > call me the Fractal Man. And I do talk a lot about fractals, to lots > of people, everywhere I go. In fact, over the past 4 years, I've > taught fractals to over 21,000 people, (roughly 12,000 children and > 9,000 adults) all over New Mexico. Given that there's ~326,000 > students in NM schools, we're now 3.6% of the way to Leaving No Child > Unfractalled! And this is so much fun... whenever I go into a > classroom and teach the kids about fractals, they get so excited! > People love fractals, and we use the beauty and excitement of > fractals to inspire interest in science, math and art. I'm always > impressed by how well young people grasp these concepts, but it makes > sense because humans are so visual, and because the world around us > is full of fractal patterns, which means our visual systems have > evolved to perceive these patterns. Oh yes - my scientific > background, to continue introducing myself, is in neuroscience, > specializing in the visual system. I don't do much direct > neuroscience research anymore, because I find I make much more of an > impact teaching. I also use the knowledge I have about how we > perceive the world to inform my art and help me design incredibly > beautiful visual stimuli that are effective at a large range of > scales and different lighting conditions. The art medium I'm best > known for is hot-air ballooning, and you can see pictures of my > fractal-inspired tiedyed balloons at http://www.SkyDyes.net . > Ballooning itself is an amazing performance artform, where we throw > ourselves into a chaotic system, the sky, and the more we understand > about the complex dynamics of the atmosphere, the more power and > control we have to navigate where we wish to fly. It's a very subtle, > very beautiful activity, completely unlike the brute-force flying you > do with an airplane. > > There's lots more to share, and I'd be happy to come up and do a > talk sometime for Friam, about the applications of fractals in > science, engineering and education. > I also want to invite you all to the most fun public shows I do, > "First Friday Fractals" at the Natural History Museum Planetarium > down here in Albuquerque, coming up again this Friday, Feb 1st, at > 6,7 and 8PM. This show has been a runaway success, having sold out > all 51 consecutive First Friday showings for over a year now. It's > really thrilling to have such an unprecedented turnout for a math and > science show, but that's a testament to the incredible beauty of > fractals. And the fulldome immersive video environment in the dome is > a most dramatic way to enjoy the experience of zooming deeeep into > algebraic fractals. I choreograph the zooms to original music, which > has the soldout audience cheering, and makes me feel like the rarest > of creatures - a mathematical rockstar. Fun! But if you want to > come, make sure to buy tickets online at least a day in advance, or > you might not get in. (See the website below for ticket info.) > > So I hope to meet you all sometime, and I look forward to getting > better connected with the Santa Fe community. Oh - one more thing... > I'll be up in Santa Fe again on Feb 5th, which is Math & Science Day > at the State Legislature. Come by if you can, say hi, see our display > of student-made fractals, and show your support for math and science > education. > Thanks! > > -Jonathan Wolfe, Ph.D. > Executive Director > http://www.FractalFoundation.org > Next First Friday Fractals show: February 1st > Fractals are SMART: Science, Math & Art! > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- -------------------------------- Alfredo Covaleda V?lez Ingeniero Agr?nomo Programador ******************************** Compre y venda sus libros en: http://www.loslibrosusados.com ******************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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