One aspect of the class is to learn about Fractals and Ed emailed me an article about a movie that that Cornell students Created. I am posting the article as the first response to this and the link to the movie is:
http://animationhistory.blogspot.com/
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(From Ed)
Cornell Chronicle On Line
Sept. 24, 2007
Cornell student's animated video makes fractals fun
and ends up on YouTube
[picture was here]
Lindsay France/University Photography
Thitidej Tularak '06, M.Eng, left, Rarinthorn
Thammakulkrajang '10, and Pisut Wisessing, who will
graduate later this fall, re-create blackboard
illustrations used in an animated film about the
Mandelbrot Set, a mathematical formula.
By Christopher Tozzi
When most of us think about math, visions of tedious
derivative equations or confusing geometry problems
are the first things to come to mind. For Pisut
Wisessing '07, who is studying at Cornell on a
scholarship from the government of Thailand, math can
be just as much about comedy and fun as about
intimidating formulas.
For Wisessing, a math and physics major in the College
of Arts and Sciences, expressing the beauty and wonder
of mathematical equations to the masses is a passion,
as exemplified by a film he produced this summer for a
film animation course (Film 324) that Lynn Tomlinson,
a visiting associate professor for Cornell's Summer
Session, has been teaching for the past five summers
at Cornell.
The video -- "Mandelbrot Set" -- was created by
Wisessing as a final project for class. With the help
of some friends, Wisessing produced the clip by
sketching figures on a chalkboard in Phillips Hall. To
produce the animation effects, he took snapshots of
the illustrations as they evolved, stroke by stroke,
and used software to string them together. The video,
which runs for two minutes and 39 seconds, comprises
almost 800 individual frames.
[another picture here]
Lindsay France/University Photography
From left, Tularak, Wisessing and Thammakulkrajan.
The catchy soundtrack, by singer-songwriter Jonathan
Coulton, also is about the mathematical formula that
gives the video its title. Coulton "wrote a song a
week for a year, and allows his music to be used for
projects like this, free of charge, with a Creative
Commons copyright license," Tomlinson said.
Tomlinson posted the completed video on YouTube, where
it has been viewed more than 9,000 times. Commentators
on the site have commended Wisessing for showing that
math can be fun.
Indeed, using math as a medium for comedy was one of
Wisessing's chief motivations, and he hopes to
continue working on animated films as well as
communicating the importance of math. "It's hard to
explain how math affects everyday life," he said. "I
want to do more about it, to find more material and
make it interesting to a general audience, and to
children in particular."
Wisessing chose the Mandelbrot Set as the focus of the
clip, because, he said, the fundamental simplicity of
its underlying formula produces geometric shapes of
enormous complexity.
The shapes are named for Benoît Mandelbrot, a
mathematician born in Poland in 1924, who is the
father of fractal geometry, which is a way of
describing complex, irregular shapes that repeat
themselves in nature. Thus a leaf is composed of an
infinite number of smaller, equally complex patterns.
Wisessing hopes to stay on at Cornell after graduating
this fall to work on a master's degree in computer
science.
Other projects produced in Tomlinson's Cornell classes
are available at
http://animationhistory.blogspot.com/.
Chris Tozzi '08 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.
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