Pentaflakes,

Durer Tiling and Fractals [for high school students] N K Srinivasan Ph D Introduction Much of the material in this article is 20th century and 21st century 'modern' geometry. The focus is on 'Fractal Geometry' ,introduced through 'Penta-flakes'. We make little diversions into related topics such as Fibonacci sequence,golden ratio, recursive and iterative processes and dynamical systems and other related math stuff. There is a brief introduction to Chaos theory and its 'fractal' manifestation, leading to 'Mandelbrot set'.

I have attempted to write this article with high school math students in mind. Read on! Penta-flakes You are familiar with snow flakes with six branches or arms , in a regular hexagonal pattern --that is ,with 6-fold rotational symmetry. You can construct a 'Penta-flake" with 5-fold rotational symmetry ,starting with a pentagon. Pentagon Let us recall a bit about pentagons you have studied in middle school geometry. A regular pentagon has five sides ,all equal,with five-fold rotational symmetry, while a square has four equal sides. The

internal angle of a square is 90 degrees, while the internal angle of a pentagon is 108 degrees...keep this in mind. The external angle ,formed by extending any side of a polygon is , of course ,72 degrees, that is 180-108. The angle 72 degrees is fascinating; several properties arise form this. You will come across 'sin36' and also 'sin 54' degrees. Note that sin 54 = 0.809 Therefore 2 sin 54 = 1.618 Does this number ring a bell? Golden ratio Well, this number is the well-known Fibonacci number ,arising from the Fibonacci sequence : 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,

89----- We form this sequence by adding the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. If you take the ratio of any two numbers, call it F' ; F' will tend to Fibonacci number: F'= 8/5 =1.6 F' = 21/13 = 1.615 F' = 55/34 = 1.6176 F' = 89/55 = 1.618 18 18 This ratio will tend towards the Golden Ratio = 1.61818 Golden ratio is denoted by phi: phi = =(1+ 5)/2 [This is also one of the solutions of the quadratic equation: x2 = 1 + x

or x2 -x -1 =0 ] You can relate a pentagon to Fibonacci number easily. In a pentagon, the diagonal is phi x side. [You can prove this for yourself by drawing the diagonal of a pentagon and its perpendicular bisector. The resulting right triangles will have 54 degree angles. Then the diagonal is 2 sin 54 = 1.618.] The aesthetic appeal of pentagon is due to the inclusion of golden ratio in its shape. Albrecht Durer Tiling Now we jump to this topic. Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), the famous German painter and who was well-known for his wood-cut drawings ,wrote a book called "the Painter's Manual'.

In that book, he showed a tiling with five fold or pentagonal symmetry. This book was published in 1525. 'Durer tiling', formed with pentagons and rhombuses, is the pattern of Penta-flakes. Penta-flakes or Durer tiling is also a fractal . "Fractal geometry" was discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot , in 1975. Thus Durer was the pioneer of Fractal geometry ,even though it was not known as such.. You may find an introduction to this geometry , through Koch curves,in your geometry text book. Fractal images are also found in certain tiles and walls of some cathedrals and mosques, including the Cathedral at Anagni,Italy. They were constructed in the

medieval period, say 10th to 13 th century.

A pentaflake figure by the author What is a fractal? A fractal is a geometric figure with self-similarity property. This means that every small part of the figure will contain a replica or copy of

the larger area..this is layman's definition of a fractal. You can draw a line say AB of 3 inches in length. Cut and remove 1/3 of its length, that is one inch, from the central part of the line. Keep repeating the process ,by taking the remaining two small lines and cutting out (1/3)of its length at the center...You will get smaller and smaller line segments...this will lead to a fractal.[This follows Cantor set.] You may be familiar with Koch curves or Koch snowflakes, a simple fractal construction, given in text books. Let us explore this. Koch curve or Koch snowflakes Helge von Koch, [1870-1924],a Swedish

mathematician , developed this fractal in 1904--- starting with an equilateral triangle. Cut middle one third of each side of the triangle . Construct an isosceles triangle at the cut portion, with the side length left over..keep repeating it....you will get smaller and smaller sides, but a beautiful figure will emerge called "Koch snow-flake".

[As we will see later,jagged coastline of Maine state in USA or the coast-lines in UK have been modeled with fractals .] You can work out the perimeter and area of this Koch curve. Perimeter and area of a fractal

You can work out the perimeter and area of any shape [triangle,square, pentagon...] as the shape is cut into smaller figures and leads to a fractal. One British mathematician, Lewis Fry Richardson ,was intrigued by the total distance of the jagged coast line of Britain. The simple answer would be: "drive around and total the distance". He made many measurements and based on these, Mandelbrot developed a fractal image of this coast line and worked out the perimeter. Consider Koch curve first. For this curve, with each step , we are increasing the sides from three to four.If s is the length of the side, perimeter after n :

P(n) = 3.s.(4/3)n where n is the number of steps or iteration we have done on the original triangle. Suppose I draw a Koch curve with s = 1 inch, then the initial perimeter of the equilateral traingle is: P(0) = 3.1 = 3 in In the next iteration, P(1) = 3 .1.(1.33)= 3.99 in After 5 iterations, the perimeter increases to : P(5)= 3.(1.33)5 = 3 x 4.162 = 12.485 in After 10 iterations, we get P(10)= 51.96 in. You can also derive an expression for the area of a Koch curve or flake: A = a/5 { 8-3(4/9)n }

where n is the number of iterations. Note that the perimeter increases rapidly with each iteration.Therefore if you wish to increase the length of a linear object, you can employ a fractal curve. For instance, to increase the length of an antenna in a mobile phone,occupying a small area,some engineers developed a fractal design. Pentaflakes Penta-flakes are fractals constructed out of pentagons, with rhombuses between the pentagons. The rhombus will have the two angles :144 deg and 36 degrees. A picture of penta-flake is shown here. In this ,I use different colors for the pentagons to add a color pattern to the flakes.

Sierpinski triangle and carpet. Waclaw Sierpinski [1882-1969] was a polish mathematician working on set theory and number theory. He discovered a simple fractal formed from an equilateral triangle

as follows: Join the midpoints of the three sides to form another smaller equilateral triangle . Cut out and remove this inner triangle. Now you are left with three smaller equilateral triangles. Repeat the same process in each of those smaller triangles..Keep repeating; you will get smaller and smaller triangles . This is called a Sierpinski triangle.

"Sierpinski Carpet" is formed by taking a square and, then cut and remove a square , half the size, from the middle and repeating the process with the remaining squares. You can do the same thing in three dimension with a cube,scooping out a smaller cube from

the center. Recursive Process In the mathematical jargon, the repeated process of constructing a fractal with smaller and smaller pieces is a 'recursive process' and it can be programmed easily. You start with a recursion formula. To recall what a recursion formula is, I give a short note here. Take the case of Fibonacci sequence given earlier; the recursion formula is based on the fact that Fibo number n is the sum of previous two numbers in the sequence starting from 0 and 1. The nth Fibo number F(n) = F(n-1) + F (n-2). This is a recursion formula. Again consider the calculation of factorials

recursively: n! = (n) n-1! We can use this formula to calculate factorial of any number. For instance: 5! = 5.4! 4! = 4.3! 3!= 3.2! 2! = 2.1!= 2 ---terminate here! Therefore 5!= 5.4.3.2.1= 120 Such recursion processes are easy to program for a computer. In the same way, we build fractal images by recursively going into smaller and smaller size units. The repeated method or iteration ,using a computer software called "Iterative Function Systems' or IFS can also be developed.

Computer graphics use these IFS methods or algorithms . Benoit Mandelbrot employed such IFS methods creating his fractal images around 1975 while working for IBM. Fractal dimensions Consider a square. If you cut up the square with half its side,then you get 4 squares. Therefore we write : 4 = 2n where n=2. Therefore the dimension of a square , 'n' is 2. Consider a cube; suppose you cut it up into smaller cubes ,each half its side, then how many cubes you will get? The answer is 8. Now 8 = 2n where n = 3 .The dimension of a cube is 3. Here 2 is called the scaling factor; since

we divide the side by half, the scale factor is the reciprocal of (1/2). What is the dimension of a Sierpinski triangle? For each iteration we get 3 similar triangles, after taking the midpoint of the sides. The scale factor is 2 again. Therefore 3 = 2n Taking logarithm on both sides, log 3 = n. log 2 or n = log(3)/log(2) 1.585 (nearly) so, this fractal has a dimension which is a "fraction". [This definition of 'similarity dimension' is due to Felix Hausdorff and is called "Hausdorff dimension". There are other definitions or measures of dimension which

we will not discuss here!] Consider the Pentaflake: each pentagon is surrounded by 6 pentagons; the scale factor is 1/(1+phi) = 1/2.618 = 0.382 so the dimension is obtained from the formula: 6 = 0.382n or the dimension n = log(6)/log(0.382) n = 0.7782/0.4179 = 1.862 [Note: You can construct a Pentaflake without the central pentagon too.] What is the dimension of a Koch curve? It is: n = log(4)/log (3) = 0.602/0.477 = 1.2619. What about n -flakes? Yes, we can construct

hexa-flakes,octa-flakes and so on. Applications of fractals Fractals are not just mathematical curiosities, but are helpful in understanding many phenomena, both natural and man-made. Fractal geometry is used to study the coast lines, earth quakes, stock market fluctuations, heart fibrilations and weather. A major application has been in 'image compression' in computer graphics.Some nice computer images have been developed using fractals for some movies too. Mandelbrot called it simply: " theory of roughness". [A brief biographical sketch of Mandelbrot, the creator of "Fractal

geometry" is given at the end of this article.] Scaling Laws Scaling of figures or three dimensional objects is a fascinating subject and is central to fractal geometry. We saw that when we construct a fractal by cutting into smaller and smaller objects, the perimeter keeps increasing. At what rate this increase occurs? To understand scaling laws, I illustrate with a simple example. Suppose you make boxes of different sizes; you are concerned with two factors: cost and volume of the box. Cost of the box would be proportional to the surface area of material required to construct the box. Assuming you

are making boxes in the form of cubes,the surface area is 6s2 where s is the side of the box. The volume of the box would be s3 .An important criteria for the selection of a box is the cost per unit volume. Therefore cost of the box /volume = C/v ratio is related as follows: R = c/v = 6/ s Or R = k s-1 This equation can also be written as follows: R = k (1/s)1 This is a scaling law which means that as size increases, the cost per unit volume of a box decreases --an inverse relation. This result is well known to all of us and therefore we buy items in larger containers.

Here we can generalize such laws as 'power laws': y = k xn where the exponent n or power is the scaling power ,k a constant and x is the scale factor. For instance, we can ask : "How the perimeter P increases as we reduce the size in a Koch curve?" Note that n is the same as the similarity dimension or Hausdorff dimension mentioned earlier. n can be a fraction or an integer.There are some fractals with integer dimensions too. [For instance 'space-filling curves' like Sierpinski curve or Hilbert curve has dimension of 2 only.'Kolams" or line

drawings built around dots in South Indian homes is a fractal with integer dimensions.] Benoit Mandelbrot, a Polish mathematician ,who settled in USA and worked in IBM for nearly three decades, discovered the "Fractal Geometry" around 1975 ,and also 'Mandelbrot set'. He coined the term "fractal' from the Latin word 'fractus' meaning 'broken' or 'fractured'. His classic book " The Fractal Geometry of Nature" was published in 1982. He used extensively computer graphics to create the fractal images . Without the use of the computers, fractal geometry would not have been discovered at all---the number crunching involved is too much for manual

computing. Note that there were earlier works such as Julia sets or fractal after Gaston Julia (1918)who was a math professor in Paris. 3-Dimensional fractals You can build three dimensional objects with fractal geometry.Consider building boxes within boxes ,half the original size. Mandelbrot used to explain the fractal geometry in Cauliflowers! Fern leaves exhibit fractal images. Fractals and chaos theory Does 'chaos' relate to the geometry of fractals? Let us start with a simple iterative formula: xn+1 = r xn (1-xn) --------(1)

where r is a positive constant. [This equation is called "Logistic map"equation.] You may be familiar with this formula,widely used in modeling population growth , limited by resources [like fish population in a lake or bacteria in a Petri dish when the population reaches a maximum -- a steady level.] The resulting curve is called 'logistic' curve or growth curve or sigmoidal curve ,when x reaches 1 as time t tends to infinity. The equation is as follows: N(t) = N0 [1/1-exp(-ct)] where c is a constant and t is time and N0 is the final (limited) population: Let x(t) = N/N0

Note that x tends to 1 as t tends to infinity. [This growth curve is explained in text books on'precalculus'.] [The logistic function is simply defined as follows: f(x) = 1/ (1 + e-x )] This iterative formula , equation 1, is very sensitive to the value of r . If r=2 for instance, the iteration soon reaches a stable value ,less than 1. When r is between 3 and [1 + 6] or (3.44949), the value of x will oscillate between some values and is again stable. If r is increased and gets close to 3.56995, the x values vary 'chaotically' with each iteration. [ To illustrate, let us consider a few

cases: Case 1 : r = 2 , x0 = 0.2 Then x1 = 2(0.2)(0.8) = 0.32 x2 = 2 (0.32)(0.68) = 0.435 x3 = 2(0.435) (0.565) = 0.491 ---------- x5 = 0.4999 Note that the iterates stay at 0.5 ,which is called a 'fixed point'. Case 2: x0 = 0.2 but r = 3 The iterates are as folllows: x1 = 0.48 x2 = 0.749 x3 = 0.564 x4 = 0.738 x5 = 0.580 x6 = 0.731

The iterates oscillate between 0.58 and 0.73. The value of x vs r branches out to two values. Case 3: let us follow the iterates for x0 = 0.2 ,but r =4 x1 = 0.64 x2 = 0.922 x3 =0.2877 x4 = 0.822 x5 = 0.585 x6 = 0.971 The iterates fluctuate between 0.97 and 0.28.Chaotic behavior has started at this value of r. So if one plots x versus r , one sees branching and the values of x may oscillate

between two or four or eight values and so on. This diagram ,called a 'bifurcation diagram' ; a graph of x versus r, which has self-similarity and is ,indeed, a fractal. This was shown by Feigenbaum and others, around 1978. It was identified as a link between Chaos theory and fractals by Mandelbrot. [You may see nice simulation diagrams in some websites.] Dynamical systems Here is another diversion, to link up with logistic map. Consider the simple population growth model with the linear (first order )differential equation: dy/dt = k y ----------(2)

Here t is the time and dy/dt is the population growth rate. The solution to the equation is the exponential function for the growth of the population: y(t) = y(0) ekt where k is positive. In reality, populations do not grow exponentially for ever and soon the growth rate decreases, often due to limited resources such as food or oxygen dissolved in a lake for fish population. To account for this we may add a negative term to equation (2), as a function of y2. Thus dy/dt = ky - l y2 ------(3) This equation is a 'non-linear' differential equation and can be solved easily.

In terms of difference equations, for a fixed time interval ,say one year, we can write: yn+1 - y n = k yn - l yn2 This equation is modified into the logistic equation: If the maximum population that can be sustained ,called carrying capacity, is N, dividing by N throughout, we can write: xn+1 = k' xn - l' xn2 = k' xn ( 1 - [l'/k']xn)
where x = y/N and k' = k +1

This equation is the same as 'logistic map' equation: xi+1 = r xi ( 1- xi) Therefore the logisitic equation,

bifurcation diagram and Mandelbrot set are related and form part of dynamical systems. This is the foundation of "iterated function systems."[IFS}

Mandelbrot Set Benoit Mandelbrot used a similar iterative formula for the set named after him: z i+1 = z2i + c where c is a constant and z is a complex number. It is fascinating how a simple formula like this one could lead to an understanding of chaos and fractals. This, indeed, is the discovery that ensured a place for Benoit Mandelbrot in the hall of fame among mathematicians.

---------------------------------------- Benoit Mandelbrot [1924-2010] was born in Warsaw, Poland in a Lithuanian Jewish family. He had great difficulty in getting school education when Poland was ruled by Russia. The family moved to Paris where his uncle was a math professor. Mandelbrot studied at Ecole Polytechnique (1945-47) Paris . When jewish persecution started ,he came to USA and studied for master's degree in Aeronautics at Caltech,Pasadena. He did post doctoral fellowships in many places including MIT and Princeton . At Princeton , he worked with John von Neumann. He joined IBM in its pure math division [Thomas Watson Lab, Yorktown Heights, NY,] and served there from 1958 to 1993. He was

later a Sterling professor at Yale University . He created the fractal geometry ,'the theory of roughness', and is well-known for 'Mandelbrot set' . Interestingly, he discovered the fractal geometry sometime in 1979 ,at the age of 55, a remarkable achievement since most mathematicians reach their peak creativity before the age of 30----(though there had been exceptions like Carl Frederich Gauss and John von Neumann.) He succeeded, he writes ,due to " extraordinarily good fortune and achingly complicated professional life". He lectured extensively on fractal patterns in art,architecture,music,poetry and

literature. His 'memoirs' was published in 2012, after his death and is titled "The Fractalist - Memoir of a scientific maverick". ----------------------------------------- References: Web pages of "wolfram" math and books on Fractals.