第十一章（.pptVIP

分形（11.0~11.2） 机械学院 黄保华 1 1.0 Introduction Back in Chapter 9, we found that the solutions of the Lorenz equations settle down to a complicated set in phase space. This set is the strange attractor. In this chapter we develop the ideas needed to describe such strange sets more precisely. The tools come from fractal geometry. Roughly speaking, fractals are complex geometric shapes with fine structure at arbitrarily small scales. Sometimes the similarity is exact; more often it is only approximate or statistical. Fractals are of great interest and have turned out to be useful in scientific applications ranging from computer graphics and image compression to the structural mechanics of cracks and the fluid mechanics of viscous fingering. Our goals in this chapter are modest. We want to become familiar with the simplest fractals and to understand the various notions of fractal dimension. These ideas will be used in Chapter 12 to clarify the geometric structure of strange attractors. 1 1.1 Countable and Uncountable Sets Are some infinities larger than others? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. In the late 1800s, Georg Cantor invented a clever way to compare different infinite sets. Two sets X and Y are said to have the same cardinality (or number of elements) if there is an invertible mapping that pairs each element x E X with precisely one y E Y. Such a mapping is called a one-to-one correspondence A familiar infinite set is the set of natural numbers N = {1,2,3,4, ...} . This set provides a basis for comparison—if another set X can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers, then X is said to be countable. Otherwise X is uncountable. Ex.11.1.1 Show that the set of even natural numbers E = {2,4,6, ...} is countable. Solution: We need to find a one-to-one correspondence between E and N . Such a correspondence is given by the invertible mapping that pairs each nat