When you speak to people that understand fractals, they say everywhere and everything is fractals. I have tried to understand fractals but I am completely lost, can someone please explain it like I’m 5?

Question

Side note: I tend to find these people very eccentric, I sorta feel like they can see the matrix 🙂 I am absolutely fascinated by this but completely lost 🙂

In: 17

Answer 1

Let’s say you’re trying to measure how long a coast is. The rough estimate would be to find the end points of what you’re trying to measure, and take the distance. Of course, this won’t be accurate, because the shore isn’t quite straight – there are ins and outs. Alright, no problem, we can measure smaller distances.

The problem is, the longer you do that – the smaller the pieces you look at – the more details you’ll catch. You should probably include the cove, but what if the cove has a large rock at the shore where water doesn’t quite reach around? What with smaller rocks? Do you measure their surface? What about the sand that water goes around and into? Molecules?

The closer you look at something – even where you would’ve previously thought you have something smooth, you find that it’s made of more nonsmooth stuff. A fractal is a shape where this goes infinitely – not quite unlike most of real world. One of their most interesting properties is that they do not have a measurable length – like the coast example.