Dragon Curve The Harter-Heighway Dragon Curve is sometimes called the Jurassic Park fractal, since it was used in chap- ter headers in Michael Crichton’s novel. Fractals are linked to chaos theory, which is a theme in the book.

The fractal can be constructed as follows: Start by drawing a long horizontal line across a sheet of graph paper. Then, connect the two end points of the line with a 90◦ elbow, extending to the right. This should look like the first image above. After this, divide the two lines in the elbow with two smaller elbows, with one pointing to the right as you draw, and the next pointing to the left. This should look like the second image in the drawing above.

Keep repeating this process: follow the curve, and for each line, draw an elbow with a 90◦ angle, alternating pointing it to the right and to the left. Each time you redraw, you will have a more detailed pattern. You can either erase the older lines you’ve drawn over, or redraw the new lines somewhere else to prevent your paper from getting too cluttered.

This image can be difficult to get right, so have patience the first few times you try it.

There is also an easy way to construct the fractal with a physical piece of paper:

Image from Take a long strip of paper and fold it in half, right over left. Then, repeat, folding it right over left. Repeat as many times as you can. When you unfold it, you can arrange it to make a dragon fractal. The complexity of the fractal will increase with the number of times you manage to fold it. You can piece together separate folded pieces of paper to make a more complex version.

Repeating either of the above processes many, many times will yield an intricate figure.

Image from