The Sierpinski Carpet Project is a nonprofit, collective and joint activity among children, from 3 to 99 years old, around the world. We want to build a giant geometric fractal, known as Sierpinski Carpet, with coloured squared stickers. The Sierpinski carpet is a fractal published by the Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpinski in 1916. Its’ construction is simple: start with a square, divide it
in 9 equal squares and take out the central one; then, iterate this process in each of the 8 remaining squares, and continue infinitely many times. Nowadays, these kind of fractals are used to design heat sinks, receptors, and computer chips. In this activity, each school with 64 children makes the 4th iteration of size 1,62 meters, by pasting stickers on a template. The 5th iteration can be made by 64*8= 512 children of 8 schools, and needs a squared extension of side 4,86 meters. A step further, the 6th iteration of 14,58 meters, will be made by 64 schools, involving 4096 children around the world. This huge carpet will be mounted in Barcelona (Spain), on October 4th, 2014, and other cities. A further challenge is to build the 7th iteration of almost 45 meters, involving 32768 children of 512 schools around the world, perhaps we can get it in May 13th, 2016! 100 years after the publication of this fractal. Registration only paying 10 eur (+shipping costs), for each group of 64 eur, and the list of participants is available at
http://topologia.wordpress.com/sierpinski-carpet-project/
Colaborating institutions:
- Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad de Almería
- Escuela Politécnica Superior y Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales, Universidad de Almería.
- Vicerrectorado de Internacionalización y Cooperación al Desarrollo, Universidad de Almería.
- Oficina de Transferencia y Resultados de Investigación, Universidad de Almería.
- SAEM Thales, Almería / SAEM Thales, Andalucía.
- Ciencia en Acción, Barcelona.
- Museo de Almería.
- Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya.
- Comité Español de Matemáticas (CEMAT) http://www.ce-mat.org/
- Mediterranean Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (MIMS)
