Real life use of fractals

By: Nicole K. , Kelsey M., Brooke A.

Fractals are used in real life everyday. First of all, fractals are geometrical or physical structures having irregular fragmented shape. Natural objects that relate to fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snowflakes, and other common items.

“Scientists, engineers, and mathematicians and other people interested in these objects (such as a computer graphics person working to create an image of an artificial landscape) might use fractals in their work. For example, a biomedical engineer might want to calculate how much surface area covers the bronchial tubes within a human lung. Or maybe an environmentalist wants to estimate how many miles of coastline could be affected by a large oil spill. These are ways that scientists use fractals to describe or approximate the *structure* of a real (or imagined) object.”(Doctor Douglas from www.mathforum.com)

Fractals are frequently used on weather forecasts. You may see fractals on radar when meteorologists and storm chasers are commenting on natural disasters and tracking storms.The meteorologists can't put the actual storm on radar, so they know a storm is coming because of their satellite, and then they change the things on satellite into fractals. The movement of the storms on radar is used in a fractilized way. They use colors to represent everything on radar, including, storms,tornadoes,rain,snow, lightning, cloud cover,etc. Fractals can also represent oil spills, you'll most likely see darker shades of the color spectrum. Storms are usually colored specks(fractals).Each color symbolizes different parts of the item. When the storms move and disappear,the radar picks up on it and reports back to the news team.

Fractals are sometimes used for animated movies. One example is the Disney movie, “Toy Story.” In this film, directors use fractals to develop leaves, grass, and even explosions that can be created with using 3-D fractal illustration.Fractals are used in music too. Fractal music is based upon the scientific theory of the fractal. Fractals don't have any shape, form, or sound, but through computer reproduction can be made into both visual images and sound.

      The computers have improved and changed over time. Most computer fanatics create many different things involving computers. Such as synthesizer. This means making rhythms and beats using computer technology. Music constructors would probably use this if someone is missing from their band, or just plain background music. If you have a media player, while playing your music, you can get rhythm pictures. The rhythm pictures are fractals, and they change to the beat of the songs. So Fractals are used in music, and they make it more fun and interesting.

       Now you have been informed on how fractals are used on a daily basis. If it weren't for fractals we wouldn't have radar and many other things that are used in important industries.

...the second site we went to was   http://www.inria.fr/actualites//inedit/inedit10_part1.en.html

...the third site we went to was   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer