science and math

powers of ten

want to know where you are in the grand scheme of things? this is the best java applet i've found for showing people of all ages the extent of what we know from quarks to the universe:

Molecular Expressions

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fractals

all of the art on these pages is generated using fractal drawing programs. since i studied as a mathematician, i've been playing with this stuff for a long time, so it's hard for me to recommend the best place to start. if you'd like to just look at some more pictures, check out the "galleries" section of fractalus.

if you'd like to try your hand at making your own images, you can try fractint. it's free and it's got just about everything and it's where i started drawing.

the place that really started me going, though, was John Conway's "Game of Life". i wrote a program for this to run on my apple ii-gs (anybody still know what that is?) when it wasn't possible to download these things (internet? what's an internet?). it's an amazingly simple set of rules - not really that mathematical - that can generate what looks suspiciously like cells in a petri dish. in the link above, use your mouse to change the colors of some squares to yellow, then change the "slow" option to "fast" or "hyper", click start and watch what happens.

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it's an amazing place...

...this universe in which we live. the religions and philosophies that most of us are trying to live with are based on our knowledge of the universe from at least 1500 years ago, but the scientific discoveries of the past century seem to reinforce some of these ancient beliefs while calling into doubt many others. i think it's past time we reexamine and rebuild a new set of beliefs that incorporate our current knowledge