This "Theme Page" has links to information about Fractals. Students and teachers will find curricular resources (information, content...) to help them learn about this topic. In addition, there are also links to instructional materials (lesson plans) which will help teachers provide instruction in this theme. Please read our disclaimer.

An Internet Fractal Lesson

To study fractals using World Wide Web and generating your own fractal. (Grades 7-12)

Chaos Club

Educational resources, online games and message chat areas for students and teachers exploring fractals. Be sure to check out the "tutorial" for a unit by Cynthia Lanius in which elementary and middle students utilize online resources to study properties of fractals either independently or with a teacher. Lessons can be downloaded and printed.

Explorer

The Explorer is a collection of information on educational resources (instructional software, lab activities, lesson plans, student created materials ...) that K-12 mathematics and science educators can download. Enter "Fractals" in the search engine and you'll see about a dozen resources.

Exploring Fractals

This site for secondary students explores several aspects of fractals. After an introduction to fractals, the author explores assigning dimensions, both non-integer and integer, and several ways of generating fractals.

Fantastic Fractals - Explore the Frontier

This 1997 ThinkQuest entry is an extensive site about fractals including: fully interactive fractal tutorials, gallery, landscapes, music, reference desk, types of fractals, downloads, fractal workshop and fractal challenge.

Fractals

A page designed to answer the questions: "What is a fractal?", What do fractals look like?, and "How can I find out more about fractals?"

Fractals and Scale

David Green created this article on fractals for the LIFE Website in Australia. In this article he explains the origin of fractals as follows: "Mandelbrot proposed the idea of a fractal as a way to cope with problems of scale in the real world. He defined a fractal to be any curve or surface that is independent of scale. This property, referred to as self-similarity, means that any portion of the curve if blown up in scale would appear identical to the whole curve.

Fractal Domains Gallery

A Website exploring fractals made with a Macintosh computer. Browse through this large gallery of amazing colours and shapes.

Fractal eXtreme

In this Website you will find images of various types of fractals generated from computer software.

[The] Fractal Microscope

This Website is hosted by the University of Illinois. The section "Why Fractals?" describes another perspective on fractals.

(A) Fractals Unit for Elementary and Middle School Students

Lesson plans designed for 4th to 8th grade students. The site is designed so students can work independently or with the teacher. Many fractal topics are described and illustrated. Teacher support materials are comprehensive with lessons that can be printed or used on-line.

(The) Fract-ED Information Pages

"Fract-ED is an introductory fractal tutorial intended for high school or college entry-level students. It is an informal discussion of some of the elements of fractal geometry, and includes interactive programs which demonstrate the techniques of fractal generation."

(The) Fractory: An Interactive Tool for Creating and Exploring Fractals

Here's a student entry in the1996 ThinkQuest competition for creating educational tools on the Internet. From this site, you learn about fractals, what they are, and how to design them. Also, you can design and display your fractals so your friends and family can view them.

IFSoft Home Page

You will find two applets: fractalina, a program for making fractals; and franimate!, a program for animating fractals. Fractalina and Franimate! are designed to help teach ideas about fractals to high school and middle school students through hands on experimentation and exploration. Comprehensive documentation about fractal and the on-line software is available. Requires Java.

(The) Leap Fractal Game

An interactive fractal game that gives the player a choice of three different games and each game can be played at four different skill levels. Requires Java.

Making Order out of Chaos

A 1997 ThinkQuest entry which explores and illustrates the chaos theory, a science about finding organization in seemingly complex systems. Fractals are a part of this theory.

Math Archives - Topics in Mathematics - Fractals

A meta-list of fractals sites that classifies these sites using icons to indicate whether they are for high school or college students and it they have images, animation, motion picture or a java requirement.

Sprott's Fractal Gallery

Lots of images organized within the following categories: Fractal of the Day; Chaos Demonstrations, Strange Attractors, More Strange Attractors, Julia Sets, Quadratic Map Basins, Iterated Function Systems, Strange Attractor Symmetric Icons, Newsgroup Collection, Animated GIF Attractors, and Natural Fractals. Each category has one example posted and then links (without thumbnails) to other samples.

Note: The sites listed above will serve as a source of curricular content in Fractals. For other resources in Mathematics (e.g., curricular content, lesson plans, and theme pages), click the "previous screen" button below. Or, click here if you wish to return directly to the CLN menu, which will give you access to educational resources in all of our subjects.