Erasmus+ arteducation.eu Upper secondary RO2 Shape fractals

1. SHAPES AND VOLUMES IN PHYSICS
FRACTALS
The lesson started with the students being given some work tasks which involved
drawing different shapes like triangles or squares, then dividing them or erasing some parts of
them and repeating the process in order to obtain a figure with the same structure at any scale.
They worked in multi-national teams and developed their English skills.
Then, the teacher revealed that the students had created fractals and explained to them
the definition and the properties of fractals, by giving appropriate examples of them, like
Julia’s accumulation or Mandelbrot’s snowman.
After being familiarised with the theme, the students were given a link to an
application which generates fractals with a given number of iterations, called Illumination
Fractals. With the fractal in front of them, they were asked to calculate its area and perimeter.
This became possible with a C++ programme created by a military student.
In the second part of the lesson, the students watched a short movie which illustrated
the infinite character of fractals by zooming each sequence and having some fractal music on
the background. Afterwards, the students were presented fractals in nature and in art, then
some experiments whose results consisted also in fractals. That was the pretext for a
competition between the students who were supposed to edit some pictures of fractals in order
to create art.
Finally, they voted for the best projects and the winners were given some diplomas.