Fractal Explorer

Fractals are patterns created using the mathematical concept of recursion. The defining characteristic of these patterns are that they contain themselves forever, and therefore have infinite detail. The fractal being displayed above is made up of the Mandelbrot set, which is a set of complex numbers. If a number is in the set, it is displayed as black. Otherwise, a colour is shown for how close it is to a number that is in the mandelbrot set. Therefore creating a pattern. As this can be done for any number, with as many decimal points as wanted, the pattern can be endlessly zoomed.

For educational purposes, this explorer also allows you to modify key aspects of the mandelbrot equation to see how it impacts the output. For example, the upper limit, the initial value per point, and the exponent of the equation can all be tweaked.

Due to limitations in the way computers store numbers, and limits of how fast computers are, the above demonstration doesn't work like that. However, you can test the latter by modifying the iteration limit field. The higher you set it, the more power your computer will throw at calculating it.