Fractals in Science

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XVI

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2. A Brief Introduction to Fractal Geometry

   • Armin Bunde, Shlomo Havlin

   Pages 1-26

3. Fractals and Self-Organized Criticality

   • Per Bak, Michael Creutz

   Pages 27-48

4. Fractals in Biology and Medicine: From DNA to the Heartbeat

   • Sergey V. Buldyrev, Ary L. Goldberger, Shlomo Havlin, C.-K. Peng, H. Eugene Stanley

   Pages 49-88

5. Self-Affine Interfaces

   • János Kertész, Tamás Vicsek

   Pages 89-118

6. A Primer of Random Walkology

   • George H. Weiss

   Pages 119-162

7. Polymers

   • Mohamed Daoud

   Pages 163-196

8. Kinetics and Spatial Organization of Competitive Reactions

   • Sidney Redner, Francois Leyvraz

   Pages 197-228

9. Fractal Analysis in Heterogeneous Chemistry

   • David Avnir, Ricardo Gutfraind, Dina Farin

   Pages 229-256

10. Computer Exploration of Fractals, Chaos, and Cooperativity

    • Dennis C. Rapaport, Martin Meyer

    Pages 257-280

11. Back Matter

    Pages 281-298

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Applying fractal geometry to science is bringing about a breakthrough in our understanding of complex systems in nature that show self-similar or self-affine features. Self-similar and self-affine processes appear everywhere in nature, in galaxies and landscapes, in earthquakes and geological cracks, in aggregates and colloids, in rough surfaces and interfaces, in glassy materials and polymers, in proteins as well as in other large molecules. Fractal structures appear also in the human body; well known examples include the lung and the vascular system. Furthermore, fractal geometry is an important tool in the analysis of phenomena as diverse as rhythms in music melodies and in the human heart­ beat and DNA sequences. Since the pioneering work of B.B. Mandelbrot, this interdisciplinary field has expanded very rapidly. The scientific community applying fractal concepts is very broad and ranges from astronomers, geoscientists, physicists, chemists and engineers to biologists and those engaging in medical research.

• Anwendungen
• Computer-Simulation
• Polymerphysik
• Selbstorganisation
• chemical physics
• chemistry
• complex systems
• computer simulation
• fractals
• geometry
• interfaces
• polymer physics
• simulation
• surface
• surface physics
• complexity

• Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Giessen, Giessen, Germany

  Armin Bunde

• Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

  Shlomo Havlin

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