In this introductory text, Dr. Birdi demonstrates experimental methods and analyses of fractal dimensions in natural processes. In addition to a general overview, he discusses in detail problems in the fields of chemistry, geochemistry, and biophysics. Both students and professionals with a minimum of mathematics or physical science training will learn to find and model shapes and patterns from their own everyday observations.

The fern-like patterns of frost on a cold window, eroded landscapes, and particles grown in an aerosol all have forms that are conventionally regarded as irregular, with little or no symmetry. In this book the reader is introduced to the fractal dimension, a concept that unifies the description of such diverse and irregular objects and implies that they all possess a new form of symmetry. The growth of these different objects is controlled by similar simple processes; descriptions of simple experiments that will bring the principles involved to life in a modestly equipped laboratory are also provided. The relevance of fractal concepts to the structure and chemistry of porous solids, and to the growth of polymers and colloids in liquid and gaseous phases, is emphasized within this concise text.

A practical guide to solving problems in chemistry with fractal geometry. It has been two decades since Mandelbrot formulated his revolutionary theories of fractal geometry. Yet, in that brief time, fractals -those strangely beautiful infinite geometric patterns -and the computational processes that give rise to them have become a valued research tool in a broad array of scientific, social-scientific, and commercial fields. While inroads also have been made in applying fractals to theoretical and applied chemistry, there continues to be a dearth of texts and references on the subject. This book helps fill that gap in the literature. Fractals in Chemistry provides chemists with a concise, practical introduction to fractal theory and its applications to a wide range of "bread and butter" issues in chemistry. Drawing upon his considerable experience as a researcher who helped pioneer some of the methods he describes, Walter Rothschild critically appraises the power and limitations of the fractal approach and shows how it can provide more predictive classification schemes and explain phenomena difficult to handle by classical means. Then, with the help of nearly 100 illustrations, he demonstrates how to apply fractals to model chemical phenomena such as adsorption, aggregation, catalysis, chemical reactivity, degradation, and turbulent flames, and how to understand dynamics on fractals in terms of fractons in diffusion-limited reactions, dispersive spectroscopies, and energy transfer. Fractals in Chemistry is both a valuable working resource for professionals in physical chemistry, chemical physics, and computer modeling and an excellent graduate-level text for courses covering the use of fractals in chemistry.

A deeply detailed discussion of fractals in biology, heterogeneous chemistry, polymers, and the earth sciences. Beginning with a general introduction to fractal geometry it continues with eight chapters on self-organized criticality, rough surfaces and interfaces, random walks, chemical reactions, and fractals in chemisty, biology, and medicine. A special chapter entitled "Computer Exploration of Fractals, Chaos, and Cooperativity" presents computer demonstrations of fractal models: 14 programs are included on a 3 1/2" MS-DOS diskette which run on any PC with at least 1 MB RAM and a EGA or VGA graphics card, 16 colors.

Historically, science has sought to reduce complex problems to their simplest components, but more recently it has recognized the merit of studying complex phenomena in situ. Fractal geometry is one such appealing approach, and this book discusses its application to complex problems in molecular biophysics. The book provides a detailed, unified treatment of fractal aspects of protein and structure dynamics, fractal reaction kinetics in biochemical systems, sequence correlations in DNA and proteins, and descriptors of chaos in enzymatic systems. In an area that has been slow to acknowledge the use of fractals, this is an important addition to the literature, offering a glimpse of the wealth of possible applications to complex problems.

This book aims to provide the scientific community with a novel and valuable approach based on fractal geometry concepts on the important properties and processes of diverse environmental systems. The interpretation of complex environmental systems using modern fractal approaches is compared and contrasted with the more classical approaches. The book will provide the fundamental knowledge necessary for solving practical environmental problems. Furthermore, it examinea how the fractal approach has been applied in order to understand the structure and reactivity of natural, environmental systems including flocs, sediments, soils, microorganisms and humic substances.

During the last couple of years, fractals have been shown to represent the common aspects of many complex processes occurring in an unusually diverse range of fields including biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics and technology. Using fractal geometry as a language, it has become possible to get a deeper insight into previously intractable problems. Among many others, a better understanding of growth phenomena, turbulence, iteractive functions, colloidal aggregation, biological pattern formation and inhomogenous materials has emerged through the application of such concepts as scale invariance, self-affinity and multifractality.This volume contains a selection of high quality papers that discuss the latest developments in the research of fractals. It is divided into 5 sections and contains altogether 64 papers. Each paper is written by a well known author or authors in the field. Beginning each section is a short introduction, written by a prominent author, which gives a brief overview of the topics discussed in the respective sections.