| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | s | c | i | . | f | r | a | c | t | a | l | s | | F | A | Q | | ( | F | r | e | q | u | e | n | t | l | y | | A | s | k | e | d | | Q | u | e | s | t | i | o | n | s | ) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| _________________________________________________________________ |
| Volume 4 Number 6 Date June 5, 1997 |
| _________________________________________________________________ |
| Copyright 1995-1997 by Michael C. Taylor. All Rights Reserved. |
| _________________________________________________________________ |
| Introduction | |
| This FAQ is posted monthly to sci.fractals, a Usenet newsgroup about |
| fractals; mathematics and software. This document is aimed at being a |
| reference about fractals, including answers to commonly asked questions, |
| archive listings of fractal software, images, and papers that can be accessed |
| via the Internet using FTP, gopher, or World-Wide-Web (WWW), and a |
| bibliography for further readings. |
| The FAQ does not give a textbook approach to learning about fractals, but a |
| summary of information from which you can learn more about and explore |
| fractals. |
| This FAQ is posted monthly to the Usenet newsgroups: sci.fractals ("Objects |
| of non-integral dimension and other chaos"), sci.answers, and news.answers. |
| Like most FAQs it can be obtained freely with a WWW browser (such as Mosaic or |
| Netscape), or by anonymous FTP from |
| ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/sci/fractals-faq | (USA). It is also |
| available from |
| ftp://ftp.Germany.EU.net/pub/newsarchive/news.answers/sci/fractals-faq.gz | |
| (Europe), | http://spanky.triumf.ca/pub/fractals/docs/SCI_FRACTALS.FAQ | (Canada), |
| http://www.bdx1.u-bordeaux.fr/MAPBX/louvet/sci.fractals-faq/faq.html | (France) |
| and | http://www.mta.ca/~mctaylor/sci.fractals-faq/ | (Canada). |
| |
| Those without FTP or WWW access can obtain the FAQ via email, by sending a |
| message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the message: |
| send usenet/news.answers/sci/fractals-faq |
| _________________________________________________________________ |
| |
| Suggestions, Comments, Mistakes | |
| Please send suggestions and corrections about the sci.fractals FAQ to |
| fractal-faq@mta.ca. | Without your contributions, the FAQ for sci.fractals will |
| not grow in its wealth. "For the readers, by the readers." Rather than calling |
| me a fool behind my back, if you find a mistake, whether spelling or factual, |
| please send me a note. That way readers of future versions of the FAQ will not |
| be misled. Also if you have problems with the appearance of the hypertext |
| version. There should not be any Netscape only markup tags contained in the |
| hypertext verion, but I have not followed strict HTML 3.2 specifications. If |
| the appearance is "incorrect" let me know what problems you experience. |
| |
| Why the different name? | |
| The old FAQ about fractals has not not been updated for over two years and | |
| has not been posted by Dr. Ermel Stepp, in as long. So this is a new FAQ based |
| on the previous FAQ's information and the readers of primarily sci.fractals, | |
| and FRAC-L. Thus it is now the sci.fractals FAQ. | |
| ______________________________________________________________________ |
| |
| Table of contents |
| | The questions which are answered include: | |
| |
| Q0 | : I am new to the 'Net. What should I know about being online? |
| Q1 | : I want to learn about fractals. What should I read first? | New | |
| Q2 | : What is a fractal? What are some examples of fractals? |
| Q3a | : What is chaos? |
| Q3b | : are fractals and chaos synonymous? | New | |
| Q4a | : What is fractal dimension? How is it calculated? |
| Q4b | : What is topological dimension? |
| Q5 | : What is a strange attractor? |
| Q6a | : What is the Mandelbrot set? |
| Q6b | : How is the Mandelbrot set actually computed? |
| Q6c | : Why do you start with z = 0? |
| Q6d | : What are the bounds of the Mandelbrot set? When does it diverge? |
| Q6e | : How can I speed up Mandelbrot set generation? |
| Q6f | : What is the area of the Mandelbrot set? |
| Q6g | : What can you say about the structure of the Mandelbrot set? |
| Q6h | : Is the Mandelbrot set connected? |
| Q6i | : What is the Mandelbrot Encyclopedia? |
| Q6j | : What is the dimension of the Mandelbrot Set? |
| Q7a | : What is the difference between the Mandelbrot set and a Julia set? |
| Q7b | : What is the connection between the Mandelbrot set and Julia sets? |
| Q7c | : How is a Julia set actually computed? |
| Q7d | : What are some Julia set facts? |
| Q8a | : How does complex arithmetic work? |
| Q8b | : How does quaternion arithmetic work? |
| Q9 | : What is the logistic equation? |
| Q10 | : What is Feigenbaum's constant? |
| Q11a | : What is an iterated function system (IFS)? |
| Q11b | : What is the state of fractal compression? |
| Q12a | : How can you make a chaotic oscillator? |
| Q12b | : What are laboratory demonstrations of chaos? |
| Q13 | : What are L-systems? |
| Q14 | : What are sources of fractal music? |
| Q15 | : How are fractal mountains generated? |
| Q16 | : What are plasma clouds? |
| Q17a | : Where are the popular periodically-forced Lyapunov fractals described? |
| Q17b | : What are Lyapunov exponents? |
| Q17c | : How can Lyapunov exponents be calculated? |
| Q18 | : Where can I get fractal T-shirts and posters? |
| Q19 | : How can I take photos of fractals? |
| Q20 | : How can 3-D fractals be generated? |
| Q21a | : What is Fractint? |
| Q21b | : How does Fractint achieve its speed? |
| Q22 | : Where can I obtain software packages to generate fractals? | New | |
| Q23a | : How does anonymous ftp work? |
| Q23b | : What if I can't use ftp to access files? |
| Q24a | : Where are fractal pictures archived? | New | |
| Q24b | : How do I view fractal pictures from alt.binaries.pictures.fractals? |
| Q25 | : Where can I obtain fractal papers? |
| Q26 | : How can I join fractal mailing lists ? |
| Q27 | : What is complexity? |
| Q28a | : What are some general references on fractals and chaos? | New | |
| Q28b | : What are some relevant journals? |
| Q28c | : What are some other Internet references? |
| Q29 | : What is a multifractal? |
| Q30 | : Are there any special notices? |
| Q31 | : Who has contributed to the Fractal FAQ? |
| Q32 | : Copyright? |
| |