Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature - Hardcover

Campbell, Sarah C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1620916274 ISBN 13: 9781620916278

Publisher: Astra Young Readers, 2014

Synopsis

Nature's repeating patterns, better known as fractals, are beautiful, universal, and explain much about how things grow. Fractals can also be quantified mathematically. Here is an elegant introduction to fractals through examples that can be seen in parks, rivers, and our very own backyards.

Young readers will be fascinated to learn that broccoli florets are fractals—just like mountain ranges, river systems, and trees—and will share in the wonder of math as it is reflected in the world around us. Perfect for any elementary school classroom or library, Mysterious Patterns is an exciting interdisciplinary introduction to repeating patterns.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah C. Campbell creates picture books with facts and photographs. Her latest book, Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, explains a simple number pattern and explores the ways it shows up in nature. Her first book, Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator was named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book and an ALSC Notable Children's Book. She partners with her husband, Richard, to take the photographs for her books. They live with their three sons in Jackson, MS. Visit sarahccampbell.com.

Reviews

Gr 3–6—The team who explored the Fibonacci sequence in Growing Patterns (Boyds Mills, 2010) returns with a similar book about fractals. Until 1975, there was no name for shapes in nature in which smaller parts looked like the whole shape. Then mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who had been thinking about and studying these patterns, named them fractals. Using clear text and outstanding color photographs, Campbell explores the concept of these unusual shapes. Beginning with circles, cones, and cylinders, she leads readers carefully and concisely through examples of fractals such as trees, rivers, mountains, broccoli, lightning, and lungs. The photographs, sometimes highlighting the ever-smaller pieces of a vegetable fractal against a black background, sometimes drawing back to give a aerial view of a geological feature, are crisp and precise and underscore the clear text. The book invites readers to construct a geometric fractal as a hands-on exemplar of the concept. An afterword reveals more of Mandelbrot's background and work, which will be an inspiration to budding scientists/mathematicians.—Marge Loch-Wouters, La Crosse Public Library, WI

The creators of Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (2010) present another mathematical concept related to patterns and fractals. After introducing classic geometric shapes, the discussion shifts to Mandelbrot’s observations of fractals with a brief explanation (“Every fractal shape has smaller parts that look like the whole shape”) and a series of examples. In the first, a line segment branches into a Y, with each arm branching again and again into ever smaller Y’s, while an adjacent photo shows a bare-branched tree. Many clear color photos illustrate the examples, which include a broccoli crown, a clustered flower head, lightning, and a mountain range. The latter may be hard for children to grasp as an example of fractals, as there’s little clarification and no graphic aid apart from a photo of mountain peaks. The afterword comments on Mandelbrot and some possible applications of his ideas (invisibility cloaks, anyone?). While clearer explanations would have made this a stronger book, this beautifully designed volume is a useful resource and, apparently, the only children’s book devoted to fractals. Grades 3-5. --Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Astra Young Readers
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1620916274
• ISBN 13: 9781620916278
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32