C-Tech2 2009

The Butterfly Effect -- Exploring Chaos and Fractals Using Java


The following Java applets are intended to illustrate interesting aspects of fractal geometries, the intricate patterns that emerge when large systems are driven from equilibrium, and the chaotic dynamics that are common in many natural systems.

A copy of the presentation given can be found here.

The challenge questions can be found here.

The von Koch Curve

You can use the mouse to drag and zoom into an area of particular interest. To return back to the original view press shift-r. This curve has some interesting features, use the applet to explore it further.

This program was written by John Bowen as part of an undegraduate research project in my group. Here is the source code. This applet uses the Java Graph Class Library developed by Leigh Brookshaw.

The Game of Life

This applet was developed by Edwin Martin, more information including the source code is available here.

For those interested:

The programs on this page are written as java applets. A great resource for learning more about java are the free tutorials written by Sun which are available here.

The presentation was written using Latex and the Beamer presentation class. Latex is a free typsetting program that is very powerful and flexible. More information can be found here. The Beamer class is a latex package that is very useful for making presentations and more infomation can be found here. Here are the latex files for the presentation and the bibliography.

This work is a continuing effort and new applets will be added as needed, please send me any comments or suggestions.

Back to my research page


July 6, 2009
Mark Paul