Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

A Mathematical Snowstorm, or How I Survived a Blizzard of Koch-like Snowflakes

When I hear about something like January’s United States blizzard, I remember the day I was hit by the discovery of an infinitely large family of Koch-like snowflakes.

The Koch snowflake (shown below) is a popular mathematical curve and one of the earliest fractal curves to have been described. It’s easy to understand because you can construct it by starting with a regular hexagon, removing the inner third of each side, building an equilateral triangle at the location where the side was removed, and then repeating the process indefinitely:

Koch snowflakes

If you isolate the hexagon’s lower side in the process above you’ll get the Koch curve, described in a 1904 paper by Helge von Koch (1870–1924). It has a long history that goes back way before the age of computer graphics. See, for example, this handmade drawing by the French mathematician Paul Lévy (1886–1971):

Handmade drawing by the French mathematician Paul Lévy

Lévy’s work “Plane or Space Curves and Surfaces Consisting of Parts Similar to the Whole” was presented to the Société Mathématique de France on February 22, 1938. But as stated in one of his notes, it was in November 1902 when Lévy had his first encounter with the curve of von Koch, which had not been discovered at that time. He defined this curve, having set himself the task of proving the existence of curves without derivatives. It’s also interesting to note that Benoit Mandelbrot (1924–2010), who coined and popularized the term fractal, was one of the best disciples of Paul Lévy.

OK, so how is it possible that I’ve been recently hit by a blizzard of new Koch-like curves if Koch snowflakes have been falling steadily for more than a century? The answer is the Wolfram Language and a tremendous passion for fractal trees. Yes, you heard it right, self-similar trees allowed me to put things in a different perspective. Few people know that a simple symmetric binary branching rule can generate the Koch curve:

Koch curve binary tree

That was my starting point. I set the central trunk to measure 1, so then the first pair of successive branches measured 1 over square root of 3, which is the scaling factor for successive branches. For example, the four branches that stem from the initial pair of branches measured 1 over square root of 3, 1 over square root of 3 equals one third, the eight successive ones measured One third, 1 over the square root of 3 equals 1 over 3 square root of 3, and so on. Then I added five extra copies of that tree rotated in angles of 60 degrees ( π/3 radians) around the base of the central trunk:

Five copies of the tree rotated in 60-degree angles around base of central trunk

Beautiful. Then I noticed that the scaling factor r =1 over square root of 3 was equal to the ratio of side BC to the regular hexagon first diagonal AC, and that the angle spanned by these two segments was equal to the angle between the central trunk and the first pair of branches, 30º or π/6 rad:

Hexagon first diagonal binary tree

So I wondered if the ratio of side CD to the second diagonal AD (r=1/2) and the angle spanned between them (60º) have a Koch-like curve associated to them. To my surprise, the answer was yes:

Hexagon second diagonal ternary tree

This time, what generated the Koch-like curve was the following ternary branching rule (three branches per joint). A left branch turned 60°, a middle branch pointed downward, and a right branch turned -60°:

Following the ternary branching rule

Again, I assembled five extra copies of it around the base of the central trunk and it generated another snowflake with 6-fold rotational symmetry:

Snowflake with 6-fold rotational symmetry

My next move consisted of checking if the remaining diagonal had a quaternary branching rule (four branches per joint) associated with it. The ratio of side DE to the third diagonal AE is r =1 over square root of 3, and the angle spanned between them measures 90º. I constrained the tree to be mirror symmetric around its trunk and to have its four branches equally spaced starting from DE:

Hexagon third diagonal quaternary tree

When I added five extra copies of the resulting quaternary tree, I obtained the following intricate Koch snowflake:

Intricate Koch snowflake

Impressed by the output of these three simple branching rules, I fed a general rule into the Wolfram Language. And here is where the blizzard began. The rule was set to generate Koch-like snowflakes associated with the ratios and angles spanned by the diagonals and sides of regular polygons. For example, these are the fractal snowflakes associated with the five diagonals of the regular octagon:


Fractal snowflakes associated with the five diagonals of the regular octagon

Now you keep counting: the nonagon, the decagon, the hendecagon, and so on up to infinity. And don’t forget to count the infinite sides of their limiting element, the circle. So the question is how did I survive the blizzard? I stopped the snowflakes from falling. I managed to trap them all in this map:

Snowflake map

Don’t panic; this diagram is really easy to understand. The points on the lower horizontal line are the end points of the first pair of branches that generate the binary trees that make Koch-like snowflakes. For example, the point labeled as H(5,2) generates the following tree:

Tree generated from the point labeled as H(5,2)

This tree has 5-fold rotational symmetry when four extra copies are assembled around the base of its trunk:

Golden ratio tree with 5-fold rotational symmetry

So now you might be wondering what happens if the first pair of branches are not exactly set at these points. Well, if the branches are still lying on the horizontal line, the tree generates a Koch-like curve, but it can no longer be assembled to make a snowflake:

Koch-like curve that cannot be assembled to make a snowflake

The points on the horizontal line are the points that define binary branching rules to generate snowflakes of n-rotational symmetry. And these snowflakes are associated with the regular polygons’ first diagonal. Here is a table that shows what these snowflakes look like:

Table showing snowflakes associated with the regular polygons' first diagonal

The diagram is that simple. The curve above the horizontal line is where Koch-like ternary trees live. Quaternary trees live in the next one, 5-ary trees in the next next one, and so on.

Animated trees

The next time a blizzard keeps you home, don’t just stare out the window at the snowflakes. Hop on your computer and reach infinity in less than an hour.

Fractal snowflakes

Download this post as a Computable Document Format (CDF) file.

Comments

Join the discussion

!Please enter your comment (at least 5 characters).

!Please enter your name.

!Please enter a valid email address.

5 comments

  1. Really Beautiful Bernat.

    It is amazing that nature and now computers can discover so many nested planar patterns.
    Thanks for these new compiled snowflake programs.

    Michael

    Reply
  2. You may be interested in the discrete global grid system (a type of GIS) built on square root 3 tiling of the Icosahedral Snyder Equal Area Aperture 3 (ISEA3H) hexagon grid. It uses the tiling structure shown above to index the globe:

    Ping me if you are interested in seeing it in action.

    Regards, Perry Peterson

    Reply