Observatoire des droits humains (anglais seulement)

Why do cauliflowers look so odd? We've cracked the maths behind their 'fractal' shape

(Version anglaise seulement)

par Etienne Farcot, Assistant professor of Mathematics, University of Nottingham

Have you ever stared at a cauliflower before preparing it and got lost in its stunningly beautiful pattern? Probably not, if you are in your right mind, but I reassure you it’s worth a try. What you’ll find is that what at first sight looks like an amorphous blob has a striking regularity.

If you take a good look, you will see that the many florets look alike and are composed of miniature versions of themselves. In maths, we call this property self-similarity, which is a defining feature of abstract geometrical objects called…

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