Fractals, the language of nature

Foredraget er på engelsk || the Lecture is in English
"Beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful: that’s fractals." - Benoit Mandelbrot, 24/7 lecture, Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony 2006

In nature, we sometimes observe instances of the same behaviour in dramatically different scenarios. Fractals are an example: we typically see them as beautiful geometric patterns observed in leaves, river formations, and much more. But what really is a fractal? Where do these cool patterns come from, and why are they useful for physicists?

The lecture aims to give an intuitive understanding of fractal geometry, and focuses more on visual arguments than mathematically rigorous ones.