What information entered the process?
Labs / Computer Science
L-System Fractals
An L-system starts from a short string (the axiom) and rewrites every symbol using production rules, over and over. A turtle then reads the result: F and G draw, + and - turn, and [ ] branch. Pick a preset and watch it grow, then edit the rules to see what you can make.
Labs / Computer Science / L-System Fractals
L-System Fractals
An L-system starts from a short string (the axiom) and rewrites every symbol using production rules, over and over. A turtle then reads the result: F and G draw, + and - turn, and [ ] branch. Pick a preset and watch it grow, then edit the rules to see what you can make.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Computer science turns clear rules into reliable processes. This model lets you step through those rules and see how each decision changes the result.
Explore
Try the model
length 0segments 0depth 0
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Nudge the depth slider up one step at a time on the Koch Snowflake — how does the string length grow, roughly ×4 each time?
- The whole plant is one rule applied to itself. Change the angle from 25° to 90° — is it still recognizably a plant?
- The Dragon curve never crosses itself. Can you spot where one bend becomes two as depth increases?
- In the Rules box, swap a + for a -. Which shapes are mirror-symmetric enough that it barely changes them?
- Write your own: try axiom F with rule F->F+F-F. What angle turns it into a tidy zig-zag versus a tangled knot?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Trace the process one step at a time. Name the rule used at each important step, then explain why the final result follows from those rules.
Check
Before you leave
Which rule changed it?
Why did the process produce this result?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.