Menger Sponge
Posted on Sun 15 May 2022 in Fun
So I ran across this site, Maffs is Phun, when someone linked to a discussion of the Pi vs. Tau debate. I was not aware of this debate and found it humorous, and slightly absurd. But then I'm not a mathematician.
From there I found the author's article on one of my favorite fractal shapes: the Menger Sponge.
Which reminds me...
A few years back I decided I was going to make my son's Minecraft time a bit more educational. We, I mean he :), has a a Minecraft server that he and his friends play on. I introduced him to Skript: a scripting language for Minecraft that allows him to change the mechanics of the game in all sorts of ways. He had a great time coding new stuff to make the game play different and fun.
One day I decided to test my Skript skills and create a PVP arena with a cool map. Of course, a Menger Sponge would be ideal. The code to generate it was fairly simple and the end product was pretty cool looking in the Minecraft world:
The play was hard because all the holes that caused players to fall to their death. (Muh ha ha ha!) But a good time was had by all and maybe my son will remember this shape with infinite surface area and zero volume(assuming I did more than four iterations.) At least he got the impression that shapes can be made by algorithm rather than placing individual blocks.