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Sierpinski Triangle

The document is a paper about the Sierpinski triangle fractal. It was first described by Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński in 1915. The Sierpinski triangle is constructed by starting with an equilateral triangle and connecting the midpoints of the sides, producing four smaller equilateral triangles with one facing up. This process is repeated on the downward facing triangles, ad infinitum. The fractal can also be generated using the chaos game method, which iteratively plots random points within the initial triangle shape. The Sierpinski triangle exhibits self-similarity and has connections to Pascal's triangle.

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399 views2 pages

Sierpinski Triangle

The document is a paper about the Sierpinski triangle fractal. It was first described by Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński in 1915. The Sierpinski triangle is constructed by starting with an equilateral triangle and connecting the midpoints of the sides, producing four smaller equilateral triangles with one facing up. This process is repeated on the downward facing triangles, ad infinitum. The fractal can also be generated using the chaos game method, which iteratively plots random points within the initial triangle shape. The Sierpinski triangle exhibits self-similarity and has connections to Pascal's triangle.

Uploaded by

horselvr
Copyright
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Elizabeth Glenn

Fractal Paper
Honors Geometry
February 2, 2009

Sierpinski Triangle
The Sierpenski triangle is a fractal having to deal with self-similar equilateral triangles. A fractal is a

geometric shape that has symmetry of scale. Some other names for this fractal are the Sierpinski Gasket

and the Sierpinski Sieve. It is usually done in two dimensions but can also be done in 3-D. This fractal

was first described in 1915 by Wacław Sierpiński. Wacław Sierpiński was a Polish Mathematician. He

is known for his contributions ti number theory, theory of functions, topology and set theory. He

published over 700 papers and 50 books. He is known mainly for the three well known fractals named

after him: The Sierpinski carpet, the Sierpinski curve and especially the Sierpinski Triangle. A

sierpeinski triangle is made by first making an equilateral triangle. The ratio of the similar triangles is a

2:1 ratio. Draw an equilateral triangle with sides of 2 triangle lengths each. Connect the midpoints of

each side. You should now have four equilateral triangles with three facing down and one facing up.

Now repeat this step in each of the equilateral triangles facing down. This fractal is never ending but

there are so many iterations it is humanly possible to do before computers have to get involved. There

are computer programs that can generate however many iterations of the fractal that they want. You can

also make the Sierpinski triangle by playing something called the chaos game. The chaos game is a

method of creating a fractal, using in this case, a triangle, and an initial point selected at random inside

it. The fractal is created by iteratively creating a sequence of points, starting with the initial random

point, in which each point in the sequence is a given fraction of the distance between the previous point

and one of the vertices of the triangle; the vertex is chosen at random in each iteration. Repeating this

iterative process a large number of times, selecting the vertex at random on each iteration, and throwing
out the first few points in the sequence, will often produce a fractal shape. The Sierpinski triangle is

also have found to have been related to pascal's triangle, which is another form of self-similarity.

Sources: Wikipedia.com and http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/sierpinski.html

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