
I saw a
NOVA on the subject and wanted to try my own.
I made a flash applet that takes a set of coded turning instructions and draws a line (eg: R, R, L for two right turns, then a left... like the old LOGO thing on the apple IIe!).
The turning instructions are generated by starting with one letter of the code, adding a letter, and then duplicating, mirroring, and inversing the code. So, 1. start with R 2. then add say an R 3. then duplicate the code before the letter you just added, so you have {R,R,R} 4. and also inverse the letters on the duplicated side {R,R,L} 5. do it again! RRL > RRLR > RRLRRLL (that was the second iteration. 6. iterate it 20 times and you'll have a list of instructions just over a million letters long. Have the computer follow the instructions and you get a picture like that over there, the famous
Jurassic Park fractal. That's actually a million little lines making a quarter million little squares that add up to this big, bumpy, spirally thing that I guess reminded Michael Crichton (RIP) of a fern.
That's what you get if you stick to 90 degree turns and a two-letter code.
The rest of these (below) are some results from my experiments with 4-letter codes and other angle increments.