Biology: Symmetry and Fractals

Have you ever wondered why so many natural structures, from trees and river networks to blood vessels, all look strangely similar? Nature creates these forms through iterative processes: simple rules that are applied repeatedly to form complex patterns. Fractals tell the story of life's creation, across the ages from ancient seashells to modern-day internet networks, and across scales from microscopic fungal mycelial networks to astronomical galaxies. This program will explore concepts in biology, growth, symmetry, iterative processes, and fractal geometry.

The growth and forms of biological life across the breadth of diversity will be examined in this program. The relationship between growth, development, and physiology will be major themes through which we will investigate biology. The understanding of how life operates at different scales of biological organization will be a consistent theme of the program, and will inform our examination of form from ecosystems to microorganisms. Students will have in-person hands-on lab experiences with plant growth forms, museum specimens, microbiology, microscopy, and a field trip at a science museum.

In fractal geometry, we will dive into the concepts of self-similarity, symmetry, and scaling, through explorations in nature, biology, and other areas such as art and popular media. We will study the formation of structure via iterative processes on paper using classic examples such as the Sierpinski triangle, and in computer labs for more complex fractals such as the Mandelbrot set. Core concepts used throughout the sciences, such as ratios, exponents, and power laws will be covered through the lens of fractals and iteration. 

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

5 - Math for Liberal Arts: Fractals and Geometry

6 - Introductory concepts in Biology: Diversity and Morphology (with lab)

3 - Seminar in ​Math and Biology for Liberal Arts