Re: the way sparks look

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 11/17/02 3:03:43 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:


>Original poster: "J Dow by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
><jdowphotography-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
>
>Hi folks
>
>Just a bit about the way sparks look.


Hi Josh,
        All natural phenomena of this type, tree growth, lightning, nervous 
systems, bronchi of the lungs, river and streams, solar flares, galaxies, 
feathers, flowers, Tesla Coil discharges, etc., are fractal in nature. That 
is, they are described by equations where the hausdorff dimension is not an 
integer. They show self-similarity across scales. To avoid straying too far 
O.T. I would recommend reading "Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws" by Manfred 
Schroeder, "Fractals Everywhere" by Michael Barnsley, or "The Fractal 
Geometry of Nature" by Benoit Mandelbrot. For a slightly less technical 
discussion, "Chaos" by James Gleich is a good first book. Most people find 
the math behind the pictures too mind-numbing to go very far, but the 
results are beautiful.

Matt D.