Activity Description Step through the generation of Sierpinski's Triangle -- a fractal made from subdividing a triangle into four smaller triangles and cutting the middle one out. Explore number patterns in sequences and geometric properties of fractals.

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Sierpinski's Triangle

Place in mathematics curriculum:

This activity can be used to:

• practice students' area and perimeter skills
• demonstrate fractal objects

This activity allows the user to step through the process of building the Sierpinski's Triangle. This activity would work well in same ability groups of three or four for about thirty-five minutes if you use the exploration questions and five minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• give implicit directions on what they are to do. For example, "Today we are going to fill out the work sheet and see if we can find formulas..."
• answer the question "What does it mean by the n-th case?"
• discuss how to find patterns in numbers