banner



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!

dragon curve fractal math art activity for kids

This mail contains chapter links. Every bit an Amazon Associate, Our Family Code earns from qualifying purchases. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more than details.

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.

A picture of a Dragon Curve fractal with 12 iterations.

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.

Magic Tree House series ad-2

Find More MAGIC TREE HOUSE ACTIVITIES

  • Learn the Scientific discipline of Mummification with Apple Mummies
  • Can You Build a Working Drawbridge? Castle STEAM Challenge
  • Rocket Send Decomposition Unplugged Coding Activity

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.

dragon curve fractal iterations

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 curve fractal 12 iterations

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.

A picture of a math art dragon curve fractal activity.

For our practice dragon bend fractal folding, we cut our paper in ane/2in strips. This was not very kid-friendly.

practice strips for fractal art

Nosotros recommend cutting strips of at least 1-inch, then that kids have an easier time constructing this awesome math art!

how to fold a dragon curve fractal 1st iteration
Fold the strip in half and to the left – Iteration #1
how to fold a dragon curve fractal 2nd iteration
Iteration #2 – Fold the strip in half again to the left
how to fold a dragon curve fractal 3rd iteration
Fold the strip in one-half and to the left for Iteration #iii
how to fold a dragon curve fractal 4th iteration
For iteration #4, fold in half and to the left. It is getting harder to fold the newspaper!
how to fold a dragon curve fractal 5th iteration
Our newspaper was only long enough to fold 5 iterations!

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.

2nd iteration unfolding dragon curve fractal
Unfold the 1st dragon curve fractal iteration
3rd iteration unfolding dragon curve fractal
2nd iteration of the dragon curve fractal
4th iteration unfolding dragon curve fractal
3rd iteration of the dragon bend fractal
5th iteration unfolding dragon curve fractal
5th iteration of the dragon bend fractal

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.

3rd stage dragon curve

This is a stage 4 dragon bend fractal. Information technology has been unfolded four times.

4th stage dragon curve

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.

stage 5 dragon curve

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.

add tape to fractal art
dragon fractal curve that needs to be taped

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!

how-to-tape-dragon-fractal-art
How to tape a dragon bend fractal box!
two colored dragon curve

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.

dragon curve fractal three colors
three color strip dragon curve

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.

dragon curve fractal art strips
final dragon curve fractal art plane

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!

five colored dragon curve fractal

This is our concluding dragon curve fractal art!

completed fractal art dragon curve

Fifty-fifty my 2yr old enjoyed playing with our dragon curve art and skilful counting the unlike colors and boxes!

A young boy playing with a dragon curve fractal math art.

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!

Learn about dragon curve fractals and how to make dragon curve fractal art with this awesome STEAM activity! #STEM #STEAM #mathart #fractalart #elementarySTEAM #homeschool

Meet Toni, the Maker Mom behind Our Family Lawmaking

our family code author picture

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!

Source: https://ourfamilycode.com/dragon-curve-fractal-art/

Posted by: robertsfromens.blogspot.com

0 Response to "How To Draw The Dragon Curve"

Post a Comment

Iklan Atas Artikel

Iklan Tengah Artikel 1

Iklan Tengah Artikel 2

Iklan Bawah Artikel