Green Seen


When you stare at the cross for at least 30 seconds, you see three illusions:

• A gap running around the circle of lilac discs;
• A green disc running around the circle of lilac discs in place of the gap; and
• The green disc running around on the grey background, with the lilac discs having disappeared in sequence. — Lilac Chaser, Wikipedia


Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

Troxler’s fading at Wikipedia

Trim Pickings

Here is an equilateral triangle divided into nine smaller equilateral triangles:

Rep-9 equilateral triangle


The triangle is a rep-tile — it’s tiled with repeating copies of itself. In this case, it’s a rep-9 triangle. Each of the nine smaller triangles can obviously be divided in their turn:

Rep-81 equilateral triangle


Rep-729 equilateral triangle


Rep-729 equilateral triangle again


Rep-6561 equilateral triangle


Rep-9 triangle repeatedly subdividing (animated)


How try trimming the original rep-9 triangle, picking one of the trimmings, and repeating in finer detail. If you choose six triangles in this pattern, you can create a symmetrical braided fractal:

Triangular fractal stage 1


Triangular fractal #2


Triangular fractal #3


Triangular fractal #3 (cleaning up)


Triangular fractal #3 (cleaning up more)


Triangular fractal #4


Triangular fractal #5


Triangular fractal #6


Triangular fractal (animated)


But this fractal using a three-triangle trim-picking isn’t symmetrical:

Trim-picking #1


Trim-picking #2


Trim-picking #3


Trim-picking #4


Trim-picking #5


To make it symmetric, you have to delay the trim, using the full rep-9 trim for the first stage:

Delayed trim-picking #1


Delayed trim-picking #2


Delayed trim-picking #3


Delayed trim-picking #4


Delayed trim-picking #5


Delayed trim-picking #6 (with first two stages as rep-9)


Delayed trim-picking (animated)


Here are some more delayed trim-pickings used to created symmetrical patterns:







Bored Bard

Pol. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a Fishmonger: he is farre gone, farre gone: and truly in my youth, I suffred much extreamity for loue: very neere this. Ile speake to him againe. What do you read my Lord?

Ham. Words, words, words. — Hamlet (c. 1600), Act 2, Scene 2

Polykoch (Kontinued)

In “Polykoch!”, I looked at variants on the famous Koch snowflake, which is created by erecting new triangles on the sides of an equilaternal triangle, like this:

Koch snowflake #1


Koch snowflake #2


Koch snowflake #3


Koch snowflake #4


Koch snowflake #5


Koch snowflake #6


Koch snowflake #7


Koch snowflake (animated)


One variant is simple: the new triangles move inward rather than outward:

Inverted Koch snowflake #1


Inverted Koch snowflake #2


Inverted Koch snowflake #3


Inverted Koch snowflake #4


Inverted Koch snowflake #5


Inverted Koch snowflake #6


Inverted Koch snowflake #7


Inverted Koch snowflake (animated)


Or you can alternate between moving the new triangles inward and outward. When they always move outward and have sides 1/5 the length of the sides of the original triangle, the snowflake looks like this:


When they move inward, then always outward, the snowflake looks like this:


And so on:




Now here’s a Koch square with its new squares moving inward:

Inverted Koch square #1


Inverted Koch square #2


Inverted Koch square #3


Inverted Koch square #4


Inverted Koch square #5


Inverted Koch square #6


Inverted Koch square (animated)


And here’s a pentagon with squares moving inwards on its sides:

Pentagon with squares #1


Pentagon with squares #2


Pentagon with squares #3


Pentagon with squares #4


Pentagon with squares #5


Pentagon with squares #6


Pentagon with squares (animated)


And finally, an octagon with hexagons on its sides. First the hexagons move outward, then inward, then outward, then inward, then outward:

Octagon with hexagons #1


Octagon with hexagons #2


Octagon with hexagons #3


Octagon with hexagons #4


Octagon with hexagons #5


Octagon with hexagons (animated)


Polykoch!

This is how you form the famous Koch snowflake, in which at each stage you erect a new triangle on the middle of each line whose sides are 1/3 the length of the line:

Koch snowflake #1


Koch snowflake #2


Koch snowflake #3


Koch snowflake #4


Koch snowflake #5


Koch snowflake #6


Koch snowflake #7


Koch snowflake (animated)


Here’s a variant of the Koch snowflake, with new mid-triangles whose sides are 1/2 the length of the lines:

Koch snowflake (1/2 side) #1


Koch snowflake (1/2 side) #2


Stage #3


Stage #4


Stage #5


Stage #6


Stage #7


Stage #8


Koch snowflake (1/2 side) (animated)


But why stop at triangles? This is a Koch square, in which at each stage you erect a new 1/3 square on the middle of each line:

Koch square #1


Koch square #2


Koch square #3


Koch square #4


Koch square #5


Koch square #6


Koch square (animated)


And a Koch pentagon, in which at each stage you erect a pentagon on the middle of each line whose sides are 1 – (1/φ^2 * 2) = 0·236067977… the length of the line (I used 55/144 as an approximation of 1/φ^2):

Koch pentagon (side 55/144) #1


Koch pentagon #2


Koch pentagon #3


Koch pentagon #4


Koch pentagon #5


Koch pentagon #6


Koch pentagon (animated)


In this close-up, you can see how precisely the sprouting pentagons kiss at each stage:

Koch pentagon (close-up) #1


Koch pentagon (close-up) #2


Koch pentagon (close-up) #3


Koch pentagon (close-up) #4


Koch pentagon (close-up) #5


Koch pentagon (close-up) #6


Koch pentagon (close-up) (animated)


Hamble On

HAMBLEDON (n.)

The sound of a single-engined aircraft flying by, heard whilst lying in a summer field in England, which somehow concentrates the silence and sense of space and timelessness and leaves one with a profound feeling of something or other. — The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd (1983)


Elsewhere Other-Accessible

The Meaning of Liff — full text
The Meaning of Liff — at Wikipedia

Alt-Writer

“I’ve found a place halfway up the churchyard, near enough to the church to be aware of, in a spiritual sense, matins on Sunday morning, but also to be within reach of, in a temporal way, orgies on Saturday nights in The Woolpack. And alternating between the temporal and the spiritual is the way I wish to spend what eternity is left to me.” — Laurie Lee, Down in the Valley: A Writer’s Landscape (2019)