Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws: Minutes from an Infinite Paradise

Readers of James Gleick's 1989 bestseller, Chaos, The Making of a New Science, will find the revolution predicted there in full swing in this advanced look at ``self-similarity, ' ' one of chaos theory's most appealing applications. Self-similarity in computer graphics yields the awesome fractal mountain patterns that have made chaos a visible theory for many nonmathematicians. Readers with good command of calculus and some physics will appreciate how far chaos theory has penetrated theoretical physics, biology and the practice of research as described in puns, illustrations and puzzles by this 20th-century Lewis Carroll. Without those skills, however, readers may stand like Alice before a small door that opens on strange new wonders of the physical world, the extended horizons of number theory and advanced math recreation. Schroeder is a professor of physics at Goettingen University in Germany. (Apr.)