Nature is the best artist, and produces stunning patterns: the feathery fronds of ice on a car in the morning, the complex patterns in a cauliflower and the aerial views of a river and its distributaries across a delta are just three of many thousands.
Often, when one views a pattern, zooming in reveals further granularity.
There is a mathematical relationship at work here. I've previously blogged about the Golden Ratio / Fibonacci sequence and its impact on natural forms.
In Adam Nicolson's 'The Sea is not made of Water' he talks about connections between Tim Robinson's maps of 'Aran' and these patterns.
The coastline of an island is impossible to measure accurately because as we zoom in the complexity of the coast reveals that it is not a straight line but has endless small imperfections which we should also measure if we want to be accurate.
Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license
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