How To Draw The Dragon Curve
Learn about dragon curve fractals and how to make dragon curve fractal fine art with this awesome STEAM activity!
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What is a Dragon Curve fractal?
A fractal is a pattern that is made up of smaller copies of itself. The dragon bend fractal has the shape of a behemothic dragon, only it's fabricated up of one line that bends dorsum and along, which creates what looks like a bunch of boxes.
The dragon bend fractal was invented in 1966 by John Heighway and William Harter. Heighway and Harter were both NASA scientists.
They discovered the dragon curve fractal when they were folding a dollar bill when they noticed that with enough folds, they could create a pattern that looked like a Chinese dragon.
Every iteration, or repeated step, of folding the paper created another version of the same dragon shape.
Day of the Dragon King
This dragon curve fractal math + art STEAM activity is part of our Magic Tree Firm book activity series based on the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne.
This activity is a great manner to pair a STEAM concept with volume number fourteen, Mean solar day of the Dragon King. In the story, Jack and Annie visit ancient China where a powerful emperor called the Dragon King has ordered all books be burned.
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What'south then interesting virtually the dragon bend fractal?
Dragon bend fractals are pretty neat because they are infinite-filling curves. This ways that the more folds that are added to a dragon curve, the more than the shape fills in instead of grows. This is what gives the fractal a dragon appearance.
The dragon curve fractal tin can likewise be used to make a tessellation, a pattern fabricated of repeating shapes that fit together. You can make a dragon curve tessellation past taking 4 dragon curves and rotating them so that each i points in a different direction.
What are Iterations?
The dragon curve fractal is one of a range of paper folding fractals. The dragon shape begins to accept place after most 10 iterations of folding the paper exactly in half and to the left followed past opening the paper up and then that each fold is 90 degrees.
Iterations are a repeated procedure. You lot can find iterations in many math and technology applications, particularly coding.
In this example, folding the newspaper in one-half and to the left is the iteration. To brand a dragon curve fractal, you complete 4-12 iterations depending on the length of your paper.
Dragon Bend Fractal Art Supplies
- Colored cardstock
- Record
How to Fold a Dragon Curve Fractal
Follow the steps below to create a dragon curve fractal design with at to the lowest degree 5 iterations. We used 1/2-inch broad strips of a 12×18 sheet of construction paper to practise and 1-inch wide strips of colored cardstock for our concluding fractal art.
For our practice dragon bend fractal folding, we cut our paper in ane/2in strips. This was not very kid-friendly.
Nosotros recommend cutting strips of at least 1-inch, then that kids have an easier time constructing this awesome math art!
Unfolding a Dragon Curve Fractal
Follow the steps below to create a dragon curve fractal design with at least 5 iterations. We used 1/2-inch strips of a 12×18 canvass of construction paper to practise and 1-inch wide strips of colored cardstock for our concluding math + art project.
Making Dragon Curve Fractal Art
For our dragon curve fractal art activity, we cut five strips of different colored papers.
Nosotros used ane-inch wide strips of colored cardstock for our final fractal art. To fold your dragon curve, fold your strip of paper in one-half to the left. Echo this iteration five times.
Unfolding Dragon Bend Stages
After folding your dragon curve, you will begin to unfold the fractal art in stages. When you lot unfold the strips of paper, brand sure that each fold is at a correct angle.
Below, you lot'll see a stage three dragon bend. This ways that it has been unfolded three times.
This is a stage 4 dragon bend fractal. Information technology has been unfolded four times.
This image beneath shows what each strip of paper should wait like before y'all adhere it to the other colored strips. Repeat for all of your other strips of newspaper.
In the image below, five dragon curves have been placed together to show how they tile the plane or fill up infinite. However, when we placed our curves together, they did not want to stay in place.
Use Tape to Secure Fractal Art
We recommend taping the corners to create the boxes as they are formed. Cheque out the best way to tape the completed boxes below!
Tape your two colors together and brand certain that each correct angle is defined. You may need to refold sections to brand strong corners.
Repeat the process and tape some other colored strip to your fractal fine art. Each curve starts at the same indicate, but is rotated xc degrees.
Repeat the procedure. For each color, I placed the new strip downwardly to eyeball where it fills in the space correctly earlier taping information technology into place. After I determined the correct placement, I taped the 4th colored strip to our fractal art.
Finally, add the remaining colored strip and check out your fractal art! You can extend the curves past adding strips and filling in the plane as much equally you'd like!
This is our concluding dragon curve fractal art!
Fifty-fifty my 2yr old enjoyed playing with our dragon curve art and skilful counting the unlike colors and boxes!
You lot can display your dragon curve fractal art by stringing thread through one of the boxes of your dragon curve. You tin too tape it to a sheet of paper to create a 3D picture to hang upwards!
Nosotros chose to stand up our dragon curve fractal art up on our table considering our thick strips made information technology piece of cake to stand!
SAVE THIS MATH + ART ACTIVITY!
This math and fine art activity presents this would-be complex mathematical concept in an piece of cake to understand, tangible way with Fibonacci art!
The goal of this activity is to explore the number Pi and prove that it is a mathematical constant past making math sun catchers out of perler beads for a fun math + art STEAM activity!
The number Pi, inspired it's own language known as "Pilish". Pilish is a challenging form of writing. Acquire it today and write a piem!
Learn the commencement 100 digits of Pi with this colour bike activeness that helps kids to visualize numbers of Pi in the beginning 100 digits and learn about colour wheels!
This Fibonacci activity for kids is a hands-on style to teach the Fibonacci sequence and make some math + fine art Fibonacci flowers!
This Pi Day activity is designed to introduce Pi by using mosaic paper squares to build a color coded cityscape.
This oil resist Escher tessellation art is a groovy style to combine science, art, and math into one masterful activity for kids!
Introduce algorithms with this hands-on unplugged coding activeness for kids!
Meet Toni, the Maker Mom behind Our Family Lawmaking
Hey there, I'm Toni! I'm a Market Research Analyst & Business Development Guru that finds my joy in unleashing my children's curiosity by exploring STEAM concepts with my fantastic five!
When I'chiliad non chasing toddlers or raising tweens, y'all can detect me tearing things up and putting them dorsum together over hither at Our Family unit Lawmaking.
I am the owner and content creator of multiple educational websites designed to increment access to STEAM & STEM education with a focus on didactics informatics and coding to kids of all ages!
You tin can also find out more about me past visiting ToniGardner.com!
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