You can generate Sierpiński carpet (the 2D analog of Menger sponge) at home! I started with addition modulo 3 and some conditional formatting in Excel.
I left the modulus configurable. Powers of 2 produce simple tessellations instead of fractals, so the first viable fractal is A1=3. Here’s the modulus 3 image at 729x729 resolution:
This is the standard sierpinski carpet. But starting with modulus 5, higher primes are going to give us some trippy Menger-analogs with intricate self-similar geometry. Let’s dive in:
Not all composite numbers are duds! Mod 9 is beautiful with its single order 3 subgroup.
But Mod 15 is not so much a fractal as a self-similar glitch. The subgroups of order 3 and 5 are all jumbled together!
Modulus 29 with 707281 cells. (That’s 29 to the fourth power!) And that’s the limit, because Excel is running garbage collection nonstop trying to compute any more of the image. Excel 2010 was limited to 2GB of ram and we are out. I call this collection of renders “seafloor”.
Original Date May 7th, 2023 11:16pm