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John Robinson's sculpture "Temple of Fire" is analogous to a construction
already found in mathematics by W.Sierpinski in 1915.
The Polish mathematician Wraclaw Sierpinski died
in 1969. His grave bears only these words:
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Note that, unlike Robinson's sculpture, the right hand picture does not involve any upside down tetrahedra, and that regular tetrahedra are used instead of elongated tetrahedra.
Sierpinski's aim was to consider iteration, i.e. repetition, of the above process, so that each small tetrahedron of the first iteration is replaced by the first iteration:
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Self-similarity. Note that the whole figure can be found again in its own details: this is true at all scales; this feature is easily understood from the process of construction. |
 The Sierpinski Gasket |
(Click to magnify) |
Robinson, without knowing of Sierpinski's work, was aware of the idea of
fractals and has perceived the importance
of this iterative process, as shown in his words: " I also see it being like a Gene, because you can go on adding tetrahedra to the sculpture for ever, so that it becomes like a Family Tree. If you go back 1000 years, we each have millions of ancestors. We are the Genetic melting pots of survival Genes.".
On the left is another iteration of the process giving Robinson's sculpture : |
The analogy shows how objects which look and indeed are very complicated may be generated by processes which may be defined in a simple way. They can explain how complicated structures, for example, of the kidney, lung, blood vessels, and so on, can be generated.
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The bone below is a real one. Fractals are used in the University of Washington to show how the geometrical structure of a bone is important for its strength.
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The Center for Polymer Studies, a scientific visualisation research center in the Physics department at Boston University.
Fractint:
A public domain software package which enables you to specify an iterative process and then draws the corresponding
fractal. It also draws fractals constructed by other methods than iterative processes and provides the possibility of
magnifying every detail of the constructed fractal.
Fractamina:
A link to an iteractive program which
draws the Sierpinski Gasket by playing dice.
There is a great deal of information about fractals available through a net search.