Fractals in the Classroom

Paul Knutson and E. Dan Dahlberg, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

n examples of fractals such as moon craters,1 rivers,2 cauliflower,3 and bread,4 the actual growth process of the fractal object is missed. In the simple experiment described here, one can observe and record the growth of calcium carbonate crystals a ubiquitous material found in marble and seashells in real time. The video frames can be digitized and analyzed to determine the fractal dimension. The calcium carbonate crystals are formed at the air-water interface of a solution of calcium hydroxide mixed with carbon dioxide from the air.5 The reactions are:

CO2 + H2O -- > H2CO3 Ca(OH)2 + H2CO3 -- > CaCO3 + 2H2O For our experiments, a fresh solution of 0.15 g of calcium hydroxide per liter of distilled water or filtered deionized water is placed in a small petri dish. Within one minute small crystals of calcite become visible on the surface of the solution (magnification of 50), and after about 20 minutes well-defined fractal structures will have formed. A video camera was used to record the growth,6 and single frames of the video were digitized7 and printed for analysis.

Fig. 1. Frame of the video after 22 minutes of growth. The light-colored regions are the fractal calcite crystals. The two square arrays are the box-counting square arrays with reduction factors of 1/4 (blue) and 1/8 (red) needed to determine the fractal dimension Db of the calcite crystal.
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Fig. 2. The specimen is subdivided using a 1/2 (heavy bold lines) and 1/3 (dashed lines) reduction factor of our scale. The reduction factor of 1/2 results in four squares occupied by the specimen whereas for 1/3 there are nine squares.

DOI: 10.1119/1.1616477

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The complex structure shown in Fig. 1 is fractal and results from the diffusion limited aggregation8 and growth dynamics of the calcite crystals. The fractal dimension is determined by the relation between a scale or metric and a physical property like either the surface area or volume, which are related by a power law.9 To determine the fractal dimension of our calcium carbonate object, let us start by considering a square, which we will refer to as our specimen (it is not fractal, of course, but for the moment lets assume we do not know that). We start by defining some length, L, which for this example will be one-half the length of a side of our specimen (the square). We divide our scale by an integer, create a lattice of squares of side scale/integer, and count the number of squares that are occupied by our specimen (even partial occupation counts). We next choose another larger integer, fill all space with these smaller squares using the same origin as the original, and again count the number of these squares that are occupied (even partially) by our specimen. In the language of fractals, the reduction factor, s, is defined as the inverse of the above integer used to divide the length scale, i.e., a specific length scale is given as Ls. We illustrate this process for s = 1/2 and 1/3 in Fig. 2. We find for the reduction factors, s, of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/5, the number of occupied squares, a, to be 4, 9, 16, and 25, respectively. The number of occupied squares, a, is given by the relationship a = 1/s D, where D is the dimension of the specimen. Since a = 1/s D, the slope of the line in a plot of log (a) versus log (1/s) is the dimension of the specimen, D (fractal or not). For the simple example here, D is found to be 2 (of course for our square specimen). This procedure, known as the box-counting technique, applies to any structure in a plane and is a special form of Mandelbrots fractal dimension.10,11 The process may be applied to our fractal CaCO3 as shown in Fig. 1. Here we first drew a box around one of the fractal crystals and then subdivided it with different reduction factors (s = 1/4 is illustrated by the bold lines and s = 1/8 is illustrated by all the lines in Fig. 2). One counts the number of grid boxes that contain at least some part of the fractal cluster, N(si) for each reduction factor. Finally the slope in a plot of log N(si) versus log (1/si) graph is the dimension Db.11

From the example in Fig. 1, using the crystal in the right-hand side of the grid, we find for the grid s = 1/4(1/8) a value of N(s) = 16(47). Then using Db = [log N(s2) log N(s1)]/[log (1/s2) log (1/s1)], one obtains Db = (log 47/16)/(log 8/4) = 1.55. Using only two values for s, the dimension we obtained varied from 1.1 to 1.8 with typical values of 1.4 and 1.3. Using more than two values of s to determine the dimension should produce better results but is difficult. To remedy this situation, a program from TruSoft International12 is an option that is available. In conclusion, there are many fractal objects that can be analyzed, but few whose formation can be observed in the classroom; the calcium carbonate fractal growth illustrated here is one of those. The advantage of this type of fractal exploration is that it provides an actual controllable experiment where the students can alter the temperature or concentration of the solution and perform experiments on growth rates, in addition to studying fractal dimension.
References 1. H. Lauwerier, Fractals: Endlessly Repeated Geometrical Figures (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1991), p. 114. 2. K. Zembrowska and M. Kuzma, Some exercises on fractals for high school students, Phys. Teach. 40, 470473 (Nov. 2002) 3. M. Zanoni, Measurement of the fractal dimension of a cauliflower, Phys. Teach. 40, 1820 (Jan. 2002). 4. M. Amaku, L.B. Horodynski-Matsushigue, and P.R. Pascholati, The fractal dimension of breads, Phys. Teach. 37, 480481 (Nov. 1999). 5. H. Hollis Wickman and Julius N. Korley, Colloid crystal self-organization and dynamics at the air/water interface, Nature 393, 445447 (June 4, 1998). 6. Shawn Carlson, Home movies of an invisible world, Sci. Am. 279, 118121 (Oct. 1998). 7. Fractal dimension software can be obtained at http://www.trusoft.netmegs.com. Another option is QuickTime at http://www.apple.com. 8. T. Halsey, Diffusion-limited aggregation: A model for pattern formation, Phys. Today 53, 3641 (Nov. 2000). 9. Peitgen, Jrgens, and Saupe, Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1992), pp. 202216.

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10. R.H. Ko and C.P. Bean, A simple experiment that demonstrates fractal behavior, Phys. Teach. 29, 7879 (Feb. 1991). 11. Vicente Talanquer and Glinda Irazoque, Fractals: To know, to do, to simulate, Phys. Teach. 31, 7278 (Feb. 1993). 12. TruSoft International, 204 37th Ave. Rm. N 133, St. Petersburg, FL 33704; 727-894-7426; http://www. trusoft.netmegs.com. PACS codes: 05.20Dd, 05.45, 06.30Bp, 34.00
Paul Knutson is a graduate student in the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction/Science Education at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. E. Dan Dahlberg is a professor of physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0213; knut0199@umn.edu; dand@physics.umn.edu

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Albert A. Bartlett, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0390

From the History of Time

The sectioning of the day into 24 hours and of hours and minutes into 60 parts became so well established in Western culture that all efforts to change this arrangement failed. The most notable attempt took place in revolutionary France in the 1790s, when the government adopted the decimal system. Although the French successfully introduced the meter, liter and other base-10 measures, the bid to break the day into 10 hours, each consisting of 100 minutes split into 100 seconds, lasted only 16 months.1
1. W.J.H. Andrewes, A chronicle of timekeeping, Sci. Am. 287, 7685 (September 2002).

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