Fractals, ambigrams & more

by | Sunday, July 29, 2018

Photo & and design © Punya Mishra.
The photo of bubbles was taken with cell phone camera (equipped with a macro lens). 

Fractals are mathematical/geometrical structures that exhibit self-similarity at increasingly small (or large) scales. Fractals were popularized by Benoit B. Mandelbrot in his 1982 book “The Fractal Geometry of Nature.” Recently, Ambigram.com magazine set up a competition to design fractal ambigrams, i.e. design and write words related to fractals in such a way that it could be read in more than one way.  I was inspired to create a bunch of designs that, in one way or another, attempt to capture fractals typographically.

Here for instance is a typographic fractal design for the word “Fractal.” You can see an animated version of this and many more designs here

Enjoy.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function

Who says scientists can't have fun. I just discovered a series of videos on (where else) YouTube about scientists expressing their doctoral research through dance!!! What can be cooler than that? Check out one of the winners: The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell...

Technology & Literacy, bemoaning the youth of today 🙂

One often hears the criticism that students today don't know how to write... the part of the blame is placed on technology, on the limitations of texting and twittering! For instance, here are two quotes from a book review TXTNG: THE GR8 DB8 by Marcus Merkmann in the...

Finding humor in play

Learning through play has been an important part of my philosophy of teaching (and learning). In fact I have argued that play is far more important than games (though games have been receiving a great deal of educational interest lately). [You can read a previous...

TPACK @ AERA, New York

In a few weeks TPACK will be going to AERA. There are a couple of events scheduled: First, is a symposium titled: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK): A Conceptual Framework With Examples for Integrating Technologies Into Teacher Education [download...

Why math ed sucks (not just in India)

My friend Hartosh Bal (author of A Certain Ambiguity, a mathematical novel) has a piece in Caravan Magazine titled "Why Fields medalists are unlikely to emerge from the Indian educational system." He mentions the fact that of the three winners of the Field's medal...

Douglas Adams & Computational Thinking

Douglas Adams & Computational Thinking

Illustration by Punya Mishra.See sketch of Douglas Adams at the end of this post.  I have always been a huge fan of Douglas Adams, trying to sneak in his ideas into my academic writing whenever I can. I had written about my previous attempts in a blog post...

What do they know? Video projects on understanding

In my summer classes I have the participants complete a video assignment on understanding. This year as always my students worked in groups over a week-and-a-half to select their topics, develop interview protocols, video tape people as they answered their questions,...

ChatGPT3 writes a Mathematical Proof (in verse)

ChatGPT3 writes a Mathematical Proof (in verse)

Many years ago I got interested in writing poetry about mathematics (all archived on my Math-Poetry page). Just to be clear, I am not a good poet (far from it) and I am even less of a mathematician—but it was a fun exercise to engage in. That said, a couple of my...

1 Comment

  1. Alessandro

    Hi Punya.
    I really appreciate your ambigrams: they are well made indeed!
    Just for you to correct a wrong link: the monthly competition is not on ambigram.com (the site, alas, is dead after a crash), but on ambigr.am
    Do you know about other competitions around the world?
    Have a nice day
    Alessandro, an Italian in Germany

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Alessandro Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *