June 23, 1999
The third day of Math explorations went in depth into fractals and iterative functions. The lesson began with the students using excel to see what happens to certain numbers when put through the iterative function:
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The students were able to find at what points the function "blows up" or gets big enough that it won't ever get smaller. The students then used this to investigate the Mandelbrot set, a fractal pattern that uses that very iterative function. With the "fractal microscope," a web based program that explores the mandelbrot set, the students investigated several aspects of the fractal.