{"id":109716,"date":"2017-09-19T16:51:55","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T20:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=109716"},"modified":"2018-01-15T16:55:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T21:55:35","slug":"look-what-we-found-chip-ross-colorful-1990s-fractal-poster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/09\/19\/look-what-we-found-chip-ross-colorful-1990s-fractal-poster\/","title":{"rendered":"Look What We Found: Chip Ross’ colorful 1990s fractal poster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Mathematics Shepley \u201cChip\u201d Ross has a 20-year-old coloring project stashed near the door to his second-floor Hathorn Hall office.<\/p>\n

He says he won\u2019t toss it. \u201cThis was a labor of love for me. I put my heart and soul into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"170919_Chip_Ross_Fractals_0013\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He\u2019s talking about three posters that represent hours of work by a cohort of K\u201312 teachers who attended the Bates Science and Math Academy, an annual series of workshops for local educators in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

To help the educators grasp the power of computers, Ross created a project involving hand-drawn fractals. A fractal is an image created from smaller versions of itself; such patterns can be seen in leaves, snowflakes, or frost on a window.<\/p>\n

Today, it takes a computer a few seconds to create a high-resolution fractal image. In the 1990s, it could take hours.<\/p>\n

After creating a fractal image on the computer, Ross gave each teacher a piece of paper with a grid of 400 little squares, each of which had a printed number symbolizing a certain color. He asked the teachers to color their tiny squares according to the number.<\/p>\n

Color they did, having no idea what the project\u2019s final output would look like “since their own tiny pieces often appeared to have been colored at random,” Ross says.<\/p>\n

\"170919_Chip_Ross_Fractals_0152\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There were some complaints, Ross recalls. Some of the high school teachers thought coloring was beneath them. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of funny\u201d he says. \u201cToday, coloring is viewed as a soothing activity. Fractal pictures are perfect for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross enjoyed the \u201ccool\u201d moment as his adult students glued the individual portions of their effort together. They slowly saw how their colored squares, which \u201cappeared to have neither rhythm nor pattern, suddenly fell into place as a unified whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lesson learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bates mathematician Chip Ross won’t toss a 20-year old coloring project. \u201cThis was a labor of love for me. I put my heart and soul into it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":109722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,30,130,133,234],"tags":[11321,5764],"class_list":["post-109716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-civic-engagement","category-collaboration","category-creativity","category-teaching-education","tag-look-what-we-found","tag-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109716"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109891,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109716\/revisions\/109891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}