What are fractals?

A fractal is like a tiny snowflake that keeps growing and growing, making more tiny snowflakes inside it forever.

Imagine you have a cookie cutter shaped like a leaf. You press it into a ball of dough, and out comes a leaf-shaped cookie. Now imagine that leaf has little leaf shapes on it, and those little ones have even smaller ones! If you keep doing this again and again, the cookie gets more and more detailed, just like how fractals work.

Fractals are patterns that repeat themselves over and over, getting smaller or bigger each time. Like when you look at a tree, there's the big trunk, then branches, then smaller twigs, and even tinier ones on those. It’s like one rule for drawing the whole thing, but it makes something super detailed.

You can find fractals in nature too! Think about the edges of a piece of broccoli or the way a river twists and turns, they all have repeating patterns that look similar at different sizes.