Manual Fractal Art by Life is
July 31st, 2008 4:47 PM
This allows enhanced explanations of the movement of molecules over the pores and surface area of the chromatography medium (besides the ionic attraction and affinity of the solute for the solvent and surface medium). I have no access to column chromatography or an HPLC – besides they are not beautiful. Paper chromatography is very beautiful and can show the movement of fluids over a surface described by fractal geometry. Fractal concepts are also used in documenting the movement of the fluid – the turbulence.
I used what materials I had on hand to do this task. The ink from a marker was placed on the filter, and then the filter was put into water for a time to allow the movement of the components of the ink to travel over the surface of the filter. The coffee filters used as the stationary medium did not work as well as real chromatography paper. The capillary action of the water and ink over the filter paper was wonderful, no problem there. The problem was there was no separation of the components of the ink. I have done this before with markers, water and real chromatography paper; and the ink components did separate. The affinity of the ink for the water and the paper was not differentiated using the coffee filters.
After using the coffee filters and markers to demonstrate the chromatographic process, I then used the filters to create flowers.
This is a very simple explanation of fractals and chromatography. Richard Feynman was good with simple.
Reference
Michael Kearney, Vadim Kochergin, Ken Petersen, Mike Mumm,William Jacob, Larry Velasquez. “Applications of Engineered Fractals in the Sugar Industry.” Proceedings from the 30th Biennial ASSBT Meeting, Operations, Orlando,Florida, February 10 - 13, 1999.
Materials for chromatography
Filter paper in water
Pretty paper
Flower Materials
Buncha fractals
The End
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What's funny is that it's only one fractal, just different stages of the one.
Vodka instead of water, I would suggest. In chromatography as in (night) life.
I do have access to an HPLC, but I don´t quite get how to get a fractal out of it :( What did you expect to see, had the colors separated?
I did try alcohol which produced the same results. I was hoping to see the separation of the ink, which is beautiful. I did not expect to see a fractal coming out of the HPLC. Since 3 obvious ways of manually producing fractal art had been done I decided to approach the task of producing manual fractal art in a different light. I decided to use the materials containing fractals in a creative way. Using the beads from a column to make art would be something different. One can not see the fractals contained in the filter paper or the movement of the water or on the beads, but they can still be used to create.
Ah, wrong ink then.
Those fractal tanks/silos from the reference are amazing.
A task with a references section -- good stuff. Could you stick some links in your task to examples of some of the phenomena you describe?
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I needed to find some time to go to the university library since all I had at home was the Internet and I wanted to answer your question as much as I was able by looking at the sources more fully. I am not an expert on fractals but I have enjoyed reading more about them. I discovered that fractals are being used for many things such as to describe the fibrin in blood clots, and someone is trying out fractal logic filters – lots going on in the fractal world.
Brian H. Kaye was my source for paper filters and fractals (Kaye, 190-192). He wrote a wonderful book full of humor describing fractals. He uses the Sierpinski fractal as an illustration for the long fibers in the paper filters thus creating migration fronts by the pigment in the ink on the filtration paper. I also took into consideration the movement of fluid itself, Zhao used the fractal theory for distribution of fluids by looking at the molecular level (Zhao, 2005) (I thought the Koch fractal worked well for this illustration for the distribution of fluids).
References
Kaye, Brian H. A Random Walk Through Fractal Dimensions. 2 ed. – Weinheim. Basel (Switzerland), Cambridge, New York, NY: VCH, 1994.
Zhao, Hua. “Radical Distribution Functions in Liquids and Fractal Aggregates.” Chemical Engineering Communications. 192 (2), 2005, 145-154.
I like the picture "Buncha Fractals", even if I don't entirely understand it.