NYTimes.com: Over the past year, working with Jeannine Mosely, a software engineer, I have led a project to teach people about these concepts by having them build a giant fractal model out of 48,912 business cards (all man-made models are also approximations). The finished object, known as the Mosely Snowflake Sponge, is on display at the University of Southern California’s Doheny Memorial Library.
4 comments:
I think this is a really cool idea, being able to physically experience math in such an artistic way. I dont consider to have a "left" or "right" oriented brain, and that is partly why i like this art. It is difficult for many people to do well in math, because many mathematics topics are hard to put into context for a student.
It is also funny to think that there are people out there that are such origami experts; specialists in curved origami seem to be particularly funky.
Fractals are where mathematics almost breaks down and becomes one with nature and art. It makes me remember that math is really only another method to understand the world around us- its true purpose is to model reality- and this is a great example of that. One of the most interesting aspects of building these fractals is the interaction of people with these beautiful structures. As the article says, “you have to think about such things as the size of a human hand in relation to three-dimensional holes.” By building these, we are interacting with art and with the world in a more pure way than almost any other avenue.
What a great combination of Math and Art! It's always cool to see things like this, and I have always been fond of fractals. As a freshman in high school I learned to manipulate fractals to make mountains when programming graphics, and have had an appreciation for them since. Its impressive that they used just bends to secure everything, and didn't use any sort of adhesive. Also I kind of just liked looking at the pretty pictures.
This is an article Akiva needs to read. I think it's so cool to see math being used in a way that actually teaches you something, at least in the way that I would find enjoyable and helpful. I also find these structures to just be really interesting. I feel that looking at them and seeing how you can use shapes and math to form something so captivating to the eye is astounding. I also just find it awesome to know that math is the main factor behind this whole project. I usually find myself hating math, but I feel like this is something I wouldn't mind spending a few hours working on, in a different scale though. a much smaller scale.
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