Hour Re-Re-Powered

In “Hour Power” I looked at my favorite fractal, the hourglass fractal:

The hourglass fractal

I showed three ways to create the fractal. Next, in “Hour Re-Powered”, I showed a fourth way. Now here’s a fifth (previously shown in “Tri Again”).

This is a rep-4 isosceles right triangle:

Rep-4 isosceles right triangle

If you divide and discard one of the four sub-triangles, then adjust one of the three remaining sub-triangles, then keep on dividing-and-discarding (and adjusting), you can create a certain fractal — the hourglass fractal:

Triangle to hourglass #1

Triangle to hourglass #2

Triangle to hourglass #3

Triangle to hourglass #4

Triangle to hourglass #5

Triangle to hourglass #6

Triangle to hourglass #7

Triangle to hourglass #8

Triangle to hourglass #9

Triangle to hourglass #10

Triangle to hourglass (anim) (open in new tab to see full-sized version)

And here is a zoomed version:

Triangle to hourglass (large)

Triangle to hourglass (large) (anim)

Hour Power

Would it be my favorite fractal if I hadn’t discovered it for myself? It might be, because I think it combines great simplicity with great beauty. I first came across it when I was looking at this rep-tile, that is, a shape that can be divided into smaller copies of itself:

Rep-4 L-Tromino

It’s called a L-tromino and is a rep-4 rep-tile, because it can be divided into four copies of itself. If you divide the L-tromino into four sub-copies and discard one particular sub-copy, then repeat again and again, you’ll get this fractal:

Tromino fractal #1

Tromino fractal #2

Tromino fractal #3

Tromino fractal #4

Tromino fractal #5

Tromino fractal #6

Tromino fractal #7

Tromino fractal #8

Tromino fractal #9

Tromino fractal #10

Tromino fractal #11

Hourglass fractal (animated)

I call it an hourglass fractal, because it reminds me of an hourglass:

A real hourglass

The hourglass fractal for comparison

I next came across the hourglass fractal when applying the same divide-and-discard process to a rep-4 square. The first fractal that appears is the Sierpiński triangle:

Square to Sierpiński triangle #1

Square to Sierpiński triangle #2

Square to Sierpiński triangle #3


Square to Sierpiński triangle #10

Square to Sierpiński triangle (animated)

However, you can rotate the sub-squares in various ways to create new fractals. Et voilà, the hourglass fractal appears again:

Square to hourglass #1

Square to hourglass #2

Square to hourglass #3

Square to hourglass #4

Square to hourglass #5

Square to hourglass #6

Square to hourglass #7

Square to hourglass #8

Square to hourglass #9

Square to hourglass #10

Square to hourglass #11

Square to hourglass (animated)

Finally, I was looking at variants of the so-called chaos game. In the standard chaos game, a point jumps half-way towards the randomly chosen vertices of a square or other polygon. In this variant of the game, I’ve added jump-towards-able mid-points to the sides of the square and restricted the point’s jumps: it can only jump towards the points that are first-nearest, seventh-nearest and eighth-nearest. And again the hourglass fractal appears:

Chaos game to hourglass #1

Chaos game to hourglass #2

Chaos game to hourglass #3

Chaos game to hourglass #4

Chaos game to hourglass #5

Chaos game to hourglass #6

Chaos game to hourglass (animated)

But what if you want to create the hourglass fractal directly? You can do it like this, using two isosceles triangles set apex-to-apex in the form of an hourglass:

Triangles to hourglass #1

Triangles to hourglass #2

Triangles to hourglass #3

Triangles to hourglass #4

Triangles to hourglass #5

Triangles to hourglass #6

Triangles to hourglass #7

Triangles to hourglass #8

Triangles to hourglass #9

Triangles to hourglass #10

Triangles to hourglass #11

Triangles to hourglass #12

Triangles to hourglass (animated)

Koch Rock

The Koch snowflake, named after the Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch, is a famous fractal that encloses a finite area within an infinitely long boundary. To make a ’flake, you start with an equilateral triangle:

Koch snowflake stage #1 (with room for manœuvre)

Next, you divide each side in three and erect a smaller equilateral triangle on the middle third, like this:

Koch snowflake #2

Each original straight side of the triangle is now 1/3 longer, so the full perimeter has also increased by 1/3. In other words, perimeter = perimeter * 1⅓. If the perimeter of the equilateral triangle was 3, the perimeter of the nascent Koch snowflake is 4 = 3 * 1⅓. The area of the original triangle also increases by 1/3, because each new equalitarian triangle is 1/9 the size of the original and there are three of them: 1/9 * 3 = 1/3.

Now here’s stage 3 of the snowflake:

Koch snowflake #3, perimeter = 4 * 1⅓ = 5⅓

Again, each straight line on the perimeter has been divided in three and capped with a smaller equilateral triangle. This increases the length of each line by 1/3 and so increases the full perimeter by a third. 4 * 1⅓ = 5⅓. However, the area does not increase by 1/3. There are twelve straight lines in the new perimeter, so twelve new equilateral triangles are erected. However, because their sides are 1/9 as long as the original side of the triangle, they have 1/(9^2) = 1/81 the area of the original triangle. 1/81 * 12 = 4/27 = 0.148…

Koch snowflake #4, perimeter = 7.11

Koch snowflake #5, p = 9.48

Koch snowflake #6, p = 12.64

Koch snowflake #7, p = 16.85

Koch snowflake (animated)

The perimeter of the triangle increases by 1⅓ each time, while the area reaches a fixed limit. And that’s how the Koch snowflake contains a finite area within an infinite boundary. But the Koch snowflake isn’t confined to itself, as it were. In “Dissecting the Diamond”, I described how dissecting and discarding parts of a certain kind of diamond could generate one side of a Koch snowflake. But now I realize that Koch snowflakes are everywhere in the diamond — it’s a Koch rock. To see how, let’s start with the full diamond. It can be divided, or dissected, into five smaller versions of itself:

Dissectable diamond

When the diamond is dissected and three of the sub-diamonds are discarded, two sub-diamonds remain. Let’s call them sub-diamonds 1 and 2. When this dissection-and-discarding is repeated again and again, a familiar shape begins to appear:

Koch rock stage 1

Koch rock #2

Koch rock #3

Koch rock #4

Koch rock #5

Koch rock #6

Koch rock #7

Koch rock #8

Koch rock #9

Koch rock #10

Koch rock #11

Koch rock #12

Koch rock #13

Koch rock (animated)

Dissecting and discarding the diamond creates one side of a Koch triangle. Now see what happens when discarding is delayed and sub-diamonds 1 and 2 are allowed to appear in other parts of the diamond. Here again is the dissectable diamond:

Dia-flake stage 1

If no sub-diamonds are discarded after dissection, the full diamond looks like this when each sub-diamond is dissected in its turn:

Dia-flake #2

Now let’s start discarding sub-diamonds:

Dia-flake #3

And now discard everything but sub-diamonds 1 and 2:

Dia-flake #4

Dia-flake #5

Dia-flake #6

Dia-flake #7

Dia-flake #8

Dia-flake #9

Dia-flake #10

Now full Koch snowflakes have appeared inside the diamond — count ’em! I see seven full ’flakes:

Dia-flake #11

Dia-flake (animated)

But that isn’t the limit. In fact, an infinite number of full ’flakes appear inside the diamond — it truly is a Koch rock. Here are examples of how to find more full ’flakes:

Dia-flake 2 (static)

Dia-flake 2 (animated)

Dia-flake 3 (static)

Dia-flake 3 (animated)

Previously pre-posted:

Dissecting the Diamond — other fractals in the dissectable diamond

Dissecting the Diamond

Pre-previously on O.o.t.Ü.-F., I dilated the delta. Now I want to dissect the diamond. In geometry, a shape is dissected when it is completely divided into smaller shapes of some kind. If the smaller shapes are identical (except for size) to the original, the original shape is called a rep-tile (because it can be tiled with repeating versions of itself). If the smaller identical shapes are equal in size to each other, the rep-tile is regular; if the smaller shapes are not equal, the rep-tile is irregular. This diamond is an irregular rep-tile or irrep-tile:

Dissectable diamond

Dissected diamond

As you can see, the diamond can be dissected into five smaller versions of itself, two larger ones and three smaller ones. This makes it a rep-5 irrep-tile. And the smaller versions, or sub-diamonds, can themselves be dissected ad infinitum, like this:

Dissected diamond stage #1

Dissected diamond #2

Dissected diamond #3

Dissected diamond #4

Dissected diamond #5

Dissected diamond #6

Dissected diamond #7

Dissected diamond #8

Dissected diamond #9

Dissected diamond (animated)

The full dissected diamond is a fractal, or shape that is similar to itself at varying scales. However, the fractality of the diamond becomes most obvious when you dissect-and-discard. That is, first you dissect the diamond, then you discard one (or more) of the sub-diamonds, like this:

Diamond fractal (retaining sub-diamonds 1,2,3,4) stage #1

1234-Diamond #2

1234-Diamond #3

1234-Diamond #4

1234-Diamond #5

1234-Diamond #6

1234-Diamond #7

1234-Diamond #8

1234-Diamond #9

1234-Diamond (animated)

Here are some more fractals created by dissecting and discarding one sub-diamond:

Diamond fractal (retaining sub-diamonds 1,2,4,5)

1245-Diamond (anim)


2345-Diamond (anim)

The 2345-diamond fractal has variants created by mirroring one or more sub-diamonds, so that the orientation of the sub-dissections changes. Here is one of the variants:

2345-Diamond (variation)

2345-Diamond (variant) (anim)

And here is a fractal created by dissecting and discarding two sub-diamonds:

Diamond fractal (retaining sub-diamonds 1,2,3)

123-Diamond (anim)

Again, the fractal has variants created by mirroring one or more of the sub-diamonds:

123-Diamond (variant #1)

123-Diamond (variant #2)

123-Diamond (variant #3)

123-Diamond (variant #4)

Some more fractals created by dissecting and discarding two sub-diamonds:


125-Diamond (anim)


134-Diamond (anim)


235-Diamond (anim)


135-Diamond (anim)

A variant of the 135-Diamond fractal looks like one side of a Koch snowflake:

135-Diamond (variant #1) — like Koch snowflake

135-Diamond (variant #2)

Finally, here are some colour variants of the full dissected diamond:

Full diamond colour variants (anim)

Elsewhere other-engageable:

Dilating the Delta

Hex Appeal

A polyiamond is a shape consisting of equilateral triangles joined edge-to-edge. There is one moniamond, consisting of one equilateral triangle, and one diamond, consisting of two. After that, there are one triamond, three tetriamonds, four pentiamonds and twelve hexiamonds. The most famous hexiamond is known as the sphinx, because it’s reminiscent of the Great Sphinx of Giza:


It’s famous because it is the only known pentagonal rep-tile, or shape that can be divided completely into smaller copies of itself. You can divide a sphinx into either four copies of itself or nine copies, like this (please open images in a new window if they fail to animate):



So far, no other pentagonal rep-tile has been discovered. Unless you count this double-triangle as a pentagon:


It has five sides, five vertices and is divisible into sixteen copies of itself. But one of the vertices sits on one of the sides, so it’s not a normal pentagon. Some might argue that this vertex divides the side into two, making the shape a hexagon. I would appeal to these ancient definitions: a point is “that which has no part” and a line is “a length without breadth” (see Neuclid on the Block). The vertex is a partless point on the breadthless line of the side, which isn’t altered by it.

But, unlike the sphinx, the double-triangle has two internal areas, not one. It can be completely drawn with five continuous lines uniting five unique points, but it definitely isn’t a normal pentagon. Even less normal are two more rep-tiles that can be drawn with five continuous lines uniting five unique points: the fish that can be created from three equilateral triangles and the fish that can be created from four isosceles right triangles:



Rep It Up

When I started to look at rep-tiles, or shapes that can be divided completely into smaller copies of themselves, I wanted to find some of my own. It turns out that it’s easy to automate a search for the simpler kinds, like those based on equilateral triangles and right triangles.

right triangle rep-tiles




(Please open the following images in a new window if they fail to animate)


triangle mosaic

Previously pre-posted (please peruse):

Rep-Tile Reflections