Announcing the Fractal Trianglethon!

Help New Mexico Students create the world’s largest fractal triangle - and set a Guinness World Record! We’re teaching thousands of children around New Mexico to create the fractal pattern known as the Sierpinski Triangle. Children from 1’st grade and up are excited to participate in this fun, beautiful and educational activity. 

Once the students have made their own triangles, we can combine three of these triangles to form a larger, self-similar version: 

3 triangles

The next step is to combine 3 of these groups of 3 triangles into a bigger version:

9 triangles

Next, we combine 3 of these bigger groups to make a big fractal triangle:

27 triangles

This represents the output of one class, and it took about 30 minutes to make. The next step is to combine the fractals from 3 classes, to make a big triangle of 81 pieces. Then we will triple that to get 243 triangles, etc…

We will be assembling a GIANT fractal triangle, made of the combined output of 243 classes of 27 triangles each. That is 6561 children whose art will be part of this gigantic fractal. The finished piece will be 192 feet on a side. If we can only generate 2143 triangles, we will still set the World Record, and the finished triangle will be 96′ on a side.

We will be assembling it on March 14th, 2010, in the Albuquerque Convention Center, westside ballroom, all day long. Please join us!

We need lots of volunteer help to pull this off! Please contact volunteers (at) fractalfoundation.org to get involved!

Download the lesson plan and learn to do this project yourself in Fractivities.

Children from the MESA club in Carlsbad NM displaying their contribution to the Trianglethon.