First, we have a procedure that takes one triangle as input, and returns
three triangles with a side length of half the original. This is the basic
generation step for the gasket.
Note that it returns 3 triangles, NOT a list of 3 triangles.
OneToThree:=proc(tri) local mid1, mid2, mid3; mid1:=[(tri[1][1]+tri[2][1])/2,(tri[1][2]+tri[2][2])/2]; mid2:=[(tri[2][1]+tri[3][1])/2,(tri[2][2]+tri[3][2])/2]; mid3:=[(tri[3][1]+tri[1][1])/2,(tri[3][2]+tri[1][2])/2]; RETURN( [tri[1], mid1, mid3, tri[1] ], [mid1, tri[2], mid2, mid1 ], [mid2, tri[3], mid3, mid2 ]); end:
Now we write gasket, which takes a list of triangles as input, and applies OneToThree to each triangle. It then repeats the process on THAT list, numsteps times.
gasket:=proc(start,numsteps) local triangles, i, k; triangles:=start; for i from 1 to numsteps do triangles:=[seq(OneToThree(triangles[k]), k=1..nops(triangles))]; od; RETURN(triangles); end:
Finally, we have a handy utility routine that allows us to plot several disjoint curves (our triangles) on the same plot, with no axes.
PlotCurves:= proc(curvelist) local i; plots[display]( PLOT( seq(CURVES(curvelist[i]),i=1..nops(curvelist))), axes=none,scaling=constrained); end:
FirstTri is an equlateral triangle of side length 2, which we use for our "level 0" gasket.
FirstTri := evalf([ [0,0], [1,sqrt(3)], [2,0], [0,0] ]): PlotCurves([FirstTri]);
We can now refine this a few times to get a level 3 gasket:
l3:= gasket([FirstTri], 3): PlotCurves(l3);
If we want, we can use the previous figure (l3) as input, and refine it
further. Thus, the following should give us a level 6 gasket:
l6:= gasket(l3 , 3): PlotCurves(l6);
cheese:=proc(trilist,n) local i; if (n<=0) then RETURN(op(trilist)); else RETURN( seq(cheese([OneToThree(trilist[i])], n-1), i=1..nops(trilist))); fi; end:
This works by using OneToThree to triple each triangle in the list, as gasket does. It then calls itself on the resulting list of 3 triangles, asking for one level less of decoration. When the number of levels to go gets to zero, the input is returned (stripped of one level of nesting).
As a consequence, notice that the output is a bunch of triangles, NOT a list of triangles as in gasket. This means that we have to wrap the result in brackets before we can feed it into PlotCurves.
The procedure cheese is not a better way than gasket to
make the Sierpinski gasket; they are just two different ways of doing the same
thing.
Here is the result.
PlotCurves([cheese([FirstTri],6)]);