Teachers in predominantly black schools in the US have developed a program to teach fractals by using corn-row hair-styles as examples of the form:
Each braid is represented as multiple copies of a "Y" shaped plait. In each iteration, the plait is copied, and a transformation is applied. The series of transformed copies creates the braid. In the above example, we can see the original style at top right, and a series of braid simulations, each composed of plait copies that are successively scaled down, rotated, and translated (reflection is only applied to whole braids, as in the case where one side of the head is a mirror image of the other). One of the interesting research outcomes was that our students discovered which parameters need to remain the same and which would be changed in order to produce the entire series of braids (that is, how to iterate the iterations).
Wayback Machine mirror [Internet Archive]
(via Collision Detection)
