Fractals at the NM State Fair

The Fractal Foundation is looking for volunteers to help teach children to make fractals at
the NM State Fair. We have a great opportunity to share the excitement and
beauty of fractals with thousands and thousands of people - and we need
volunteers!

We’re going to have a booth in the School Arts Building, where we’ll be
teaching children how to make fractal triangles, as part of our ongoing
Trianglethon project. We did this last year, with great success, and we’re
excited to do it again!

Its a fun and easy project. You don’t need to be a math whiz at all! It’s more of an
arts and crafts project. We do need you to attend a 1 hour training session.
Volunteers from last year who have already been trained do not need to
repeat the training, though you’re welcome to if you’d like a refresher.

VOLUNTEER TRAINING: Next Wednesday, Sept 8th, from 6-7PM, at
the Source conference room, 1111 Carlisle SE in ABQ. Please RSVP to our
Volunteer Coordinator, Lee Hammer, at Volunteers (at) fractalfoundation (dot) org.
And if you can’t make the training session but want to volunteer, let us know,
and we can probably arrange to train you at the Fair.

The State Fair runs from Sept 10-26, except Mondays and Tuesdays.
We’re looking to schedule 3 volunteer shifts per day, at 3 hours each:
11:00-2:00 | 2:00-5:00 | 5:00-8:00. Please contact Lee at
Volunteers (at) fractalfoundation (dot) org to sign up for a slot!

We’re working to get all our volunteers free admission and parking passes,
so please let us know as soon as possible if you can participate. THANKS!

Fractals at TEDxABQ!

Dr. Jonathan Wolfe will be giving a talk about fractals at TEDxABQ on September 18th at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Albuquerque. The 18 minute talk will touch on fractals in education, spirituality, and politics.

Local fractal fans are invited to attend this exciting and stimulating all-day event that will also feature many other local luminaries presenting “Ideas Worth Sharing.”

TEDxABQ is a regional offshoot of the influential global TED talks. Learn more about the event, and buy tickets at TEDxABQ.com

We have been given a discount code for fractal fans to use when purchasing tickets.

*** Please enter the code “Fractal”  for a 20% discount on tickets. ***

The Fractal Foundation will also receive a donation for each ticket purchased with this code, so please share it with your friends. Thanks, and we hope to see you there on September 18th!

Fractal Trianglethon a Giant Success!

The Fractal Foundation constructed the world’s largest fractal triangle on March 14, 2010 (PI-Day) in the Albuquerque Convention Center. Over 40 volunteers helped build the giant triangle and celebrate math, art, and the amazing wonder of fractals. The giant triangle was assembled out of 2187 individual triangles made by children from all over the world.
While 2187 is the number required to assemble a 7th order fractal triangle, 96 feet on a side, so many students had participated that there were enough to keep building, and altogether the pattern was extended to include 4036 triangles.

See a timelapse video of the assembly, which took place over almost 2 hours:

We are continuing the project, and next year we intend  to break our own record by assembling an 8th order fractal triangle, 196 feet on a side, comprised of 6561 individual triangles.

We need more triangles, so Please Participate!

Gigantic thanks to all who participated: the dozens of volunteers who helped build the giant triangle, and especially to the thousands of children who each contributed a triangle!
And much gratitude to the Albuquerque Convention Center, for generously providing their ballrooms for the event. We look forward to returning next year in the even larger exhibit hall!

Congratulations and thanks, to our Participating Schools:

ALBUQUERQUE:
Annunciation
Apache Elementary
Bandelier Elementary
Bellehaven Elementary
Christ Lutheran
Corrales Elementary
Comanche Elementary
Dennis Chavez Elementary
Double Eagle Elementary
Eastern Hills Christian Academy
Ernie Pyle Middle School
Escuela del Sol Montessori
Governor Bent Elementary
Harrison Middle School
Hodgin Elementary
Inez Elementary
Lavaland Elementary
Lowell Elementary
Mission Avenue Elementary
Monte Vista Elementary
Montezuma Elementary
North Valley Academy
Petroglyph Elementary
San Antonito Elementary
SevenBar Elementary
Sunset Mesa Elementary
Sunset View Elementary
Sierra Vista Elementary
Susie Rayos Marmon Elementary
SY Jackson Elementary
Tierra Antigua Elementary
Valley High School
Vision Quest Alternative
Zuni Elementary

RIO RANCHO:
Cielo Azul Elementary
Enchanted Hills Elementary
Martin Luther King
Sandia Vista
NEW MEXICO:
Acoma - Sky City Elementary
Bosque Farms Elementary
Carlsbad - Alta Vista MS
Edgewood Elementary
Placitas Elementary
Ramah HS
Roswell - Mountain View MS
Santa Rosa MS
Silver City, Harrison Schmidt ES

THE WORLD:
Lyle School, Minnesota,
Camberwell Junior School
Canterbury, Australia

Have we forgotten anyone? Please let us know!

Fractal Challenge Winners Award Ceremony

The winners of the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge were publicly awarded during a ceremony at the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge on March 14th, 2010.
Five of the 8 winning students were present, and they received a poster of their fractal, an award certificate, and a trophy fractal billboard. In addition, their artworks will be on display in the atrium of the West Complex of the Albuquerque Convention Center for the next year.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Many thanks to the Albuquerque Convention Center for graciously providing their facilities for the Fractal Challenge and Trianglethon, and to Clear Channel Outdoor, who generously provided the splendid fractal billboard trophies for the winning students.

Fractals at the NM State Legislature

For the 3′d year in a row, the Fractal Foundation had an interactive booth at “Math & Science Day” at the NM State Legislature in Santa Fe. The event was huge success and featured about a dozen educational organizations from around the state.
At our table, we taught hundreds of children and adults about fractals, and we collected 87 new student fractal triangles made by students, to be part of the Fractal Trianglethon project.

Many thanks to the legislators who spent some time talking about math and science education and who learned a little bit about fractals! Thanks also to Innovate Educate NM for hosting a delightful cocktail party where we could all mingle afterwards.

World’s Largest Fractal Triangle - coming 3/14!

We’re building a giant fractal made of 2187 student-made triangles, and we need your help! “The Fractal Trianglethon” will be the world’s largest fractal triangle. It’s going to be 96 feet wide! We’ve reserved the Albuquerque Convention Center west complex ballroom for the whole day for this event on March 14th 2010. Please join us in the excitement and help build the giant fractal! Children and adults welcome.

Please email “Volunteers (at) FractalFoundation.org” to sign up for a shift!

Timeline:

• Shift 1: 8:30AM-12 noon: We build the giant Fractal!
• Shift 2: 12 noon - 3:00 PM:  We open the hall to the public at noon
• Shift 3: 3:00 - 6:00 PM:  Celebration and Clean up.

At 3:14 PM, we will officially certify the World Record, and take a group photo with as many kids as we can squeeze into the fractal.

At 3:30 we will move to the atrium and unveil the new student winners of the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge and present their awards.

At 5:00 we start cleaning up the fractal triangles.

The date of the World Record event, March 14th is mathematically significant. It’s known as Pi-day, and is celebrated all over the world by math-lovers. Even more appropriately, it is the birthday of Waclaw Sierpinski, the inventor of this fantastic triangle. What better birthday present than to have thousands of children build the world’s largest Sierpinski Triangle!

Many thanks to the Albuquerque Convention Center for generously donating the ballroom for this event!

Albuquerque Kids on “Research Rocks” (pt2)

Channel 7 recently featured several of Albuquerque’s brightest, most creative students on its “Research Rocks” segment. Two of the winners of the 2009 Albuquerque Fractal Challenge, and one of the 2008 winners (and her brother) were featured in the video explaining how they’ve been exploring fractals on computer to create amazing mathematical artworks.

The host, Byron Morton, even travels to Downtown ABQ to film Rachel Washington’s amazing gigantic public art fractal. Many thanks to Byron, KOAT Channel 7, and Intel for sponsoring “Research Rocks!”

Watch the Video here.

2009 - The Year in Fractals

We want to share some of the exciting developments of the last year for fractals in education and in our community in general. We’ve grown so much and passed so many milestones, it’s good to pause and reflect on them. It’s great what we’ve accomplished - but we need your help to do more!

Please make a tax-deductible DONATION to support science, math and art education.

Any donations received before midnight MST 12/31 will be tax-deductible for 2009.

THANKS!

And now, a look back at 2009:

• Over the course of the year, we taught ~6000 children and 2500 adults about the beauty of math and science, through fractals. All told, since 2003, we’ve taught over 27,000 kids and 17,000 adults. That’s a lot of excited, inspired, motivated people!
• We sold out all 36 First Friday Fractal planetarium shows (Now 131 total!) There were many reports of people buying ’scalped’ tickets at up to $20. Not that we encourage this, but it’s a testament to the show’s success and the public’s love of fractals.
• We installed the first downtown building wrap - a vision over 5 years in the making, thanks to a grant from Albuquerque’s Urban Enhancement Trust Fund. We also featured the winning student fractals from the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge on 20 billboards, thanks to the fantastic support from Clear Channel Outdoor. And look for more fractal billboards, and building wraps, soon!
• We received a $6540 Albuquerque Community Foundation grant - their third year of generously supporting our outreach efforts to teach fractals in local schools.
• We received a $5000 grant from Xilinx, for the second year in a row, to comprehensively teach the students, teachers and parents at Apache Elementary about fractals. We’re proud to be connected to this school, and this company.
• We received a $25,000 Summer Institute grant from the Public Education Department, which will help us teach 40 Albuquerque teachers science and math lessons, skills and projects, they can bring to their classes, using fractals. We can’t teach all the kids fractals ourselves, but by teaching the teachers, we have a chance to make a giant impact.
• We received $1000 grant from Sandia Labs /  Lockheed Martin - a great first partnership with a major local supporter of science and math education.
• We licensed fulldome fractal content to two planetariums (in Illinois and Pennsylvania), the first time we’ve played our super-successful fulldome fractals anywhere outside NM. We’ve established a content distributor partnership with Spitz Planetariums to help grow this business and spread fractals around the world.
• We had a two week outdoor fractal art installation at the NM State Fair, seen by over 500,000 visitors, and a booth where 24 wonderful volunteers taught fractals to thousands of children.
• We were featured on KOAT Channel 7 (thanks to Intel), in Albuquerque the Magazine, Around 505, New Mexico Journeys, and the Rio Grande Sun.
• We launched a facebook fanpage in our first foray into social networking, and have gained over 1100 fans since April. It’s a great forum for people to share their ideas about - and their love of - fractals.

This has indeed been a whirlwind year of growth and fractal activity. Thanks for your support in helping us reach ever more people with the beauty of math and science. Look for more about our future vision coming up.

And for now…

“Research Rocks” features ABQ Students (part 1)

 

Albuquerque high school students Claudio Gonzalez and Christian Meyer were featured on KOAT Channel 7’s “Research Rocks” segment. The students were demonstrating their award-winning student research project  that explored the ability of fractal antennas to transmit radio signals more reliably than standard non-fractal antennas.

See the video here. 

Many thanks to Byron Morton from Channel 7, as well as Liz Shipley of Intel and Russ Fisher-Ives of Inquiry Facilitators for sponsoring the “Research Rocks” program.

See - and make - fractals at the NM State Fair

The 8 winning fractals from the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge have been installed on the NM State Fairgrounds, and they look spectacular!

We’re also hosting a table in the School Arts Building where you can come learn about fractals, and kids can make a fractal triangle that will be part of the Trianglethon project, where we’re making the world’s largest fractal triangle. We’ll be there till Sept 27, and hope you can come check it out. Many thanks to our great volunteers for staffing the booth!

Some of the winners from the Fractal Challenge, on display at the Fair:

 

 

 

Many thanks to Resolution Graphics for donating the printing, and to Symbiotic Builders for donating the installation. Also to Albuquerque’s Urban Enhancement Trust Fund and Albuquerque Community Foundation for sponsoring the Fractal Challenge!

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