A fractal is a mathematical set which can often have different connotations depending on if you are a layperson or a mathematician.
The simplest aspect is that of self-similar patterns which basically means that they look the same from near or far – this can be seen easily in Fractal Art and the Mandelbrot set.
This handout from Yale goes through the mathematical aspects and offers more details about fractals, chaos with introductions, activities and links to free software.
You can also visit the wiki link on fractals as well as these links to open source / freeware software which means you can access them free.
- Apophysis – windows based OS software.
- Electric Sheep – OS software for making screensavers
- Sterling – Freeware fractal generating software for Microsoft windows
- SpangFract – For Mac OS. This is a link to the yahoo group where you can find out more info about this fractal generating software.
- XaoS – a realtime cross platform OS fractal zooming programme