roomthily

fractal wander-pattern of the great albatross

via Cryptoforestry

i like all of those words

prostheticknowledge:

Wooden Clockwork Fractal Computer

Blog by Brent Thorne documenting the development of his clockwork wooden computer designed to calculate and draw fractals:

I’ve been working on this for a while now.  Its a wooden computer that computes continuous self-similar fractals.  I’ll post the working model of a general computer implemented in gears as soon as I get some laser cutter time to complete the counter/comparator unit. 

How the hell is this supposed to work?

I could tell you that it took years and years of research and development to create a theory of computation that could be implemented in wood, but alias it would be untrue.  The idea was formed after only a few reductions and one night when I couldn’t get to sleep.  You see, computers are much simpler than your teachers might of taught you in school.  You don’t even need the Boolean logic primitives to create a computer.  These so called primitives are merely symbolic.

The most primitive computer is comprised of only two parts and from these two parts we can create all others.  Those two parts are memory and a comparator.  Some may claim that any practical computer must also have input and output, but that just is memory, or registers, memory again, or an ALU, nope that’s a comparator.

We can further delineate memory into two types, read-only and read-write.  We need the read-write type of memory to store temporary values for comparison.  For example, read-write memory could be a toggle or counter.  Read-only memory is convenient for storing tables or a program, however these two examples are symbolic and not necessary for computation.  An example of read-only memory is pegs in a disc, where the presents of a peg represents a symbol.

The true heart of a computer is the comparator.  A comparator simply compares two values.  One of those two values was read from memory previously and the other value is read at the current position in memory.

Now that we have our fundamental blocks we can start creating all the other complications that are common to modern computers. 

You can find more information about the project at the blog here, including some videos of prototypes in action.

(Source: shriyashriyashriya)

bluecloudsfloating:

Cummulus (Ciro Najle) - 

Najle says crochet is the perfect medium for representing fractal structures because its surfaces can be subdivided again and again by varying the length of neighbouring crochet lines. This can create the necessary curvature for cumulus clouds, in much the same way that crochet has been used to represent the hyperbolic surfaces of corals.

Translating this complexity into cloud art involved a serious amount of mathematics. The sculpture comprises crocheted squares, each of which has an individual pattern modelled by Najle, who generated 1664 different diagrams pinpointing the intersections of the woollen strands, the crochet knots that are key to its structure. It took a team of nearly 40 crochet craftswomen in Merlo, Buenos Aires, Argentina just over a week to make the panels, which were then sewn together into larger sections to form the glorious whole.

via CultureLab

un:

(via supercuddlypuppies)

Animated fractal mecha? What is this?

awesome

(Source: illillill)

Level 3 Menger Sponge at 80% (by Nicholas Rougeux)

3304 post-its

scienceisbeauty:

Orbits of the quaternion Mandelbrot set. This image was created by simply revolving the 2D Mandelbrot orbits.

Credit&Source: Paul Nylander, Hypercomplex Fractals

Sierpinskitaschen (sierpinski hamantaschen)

via Seattle Local Food

the world was incomplete without a Sierpinski hamantaschen, or sierpinskitaschen

un:

squashed:”So this happened.”

Mandelbrot Cookie is infinite

gingerbread Menger sponge

via Instructables