Mandelbrot Set for Dummies

     I don't know why, but these things are fascinating. I remember spending hours typing in BASIC programs to generate them on my Radio Shack Color Computer and Commodore 64.
     The Mandelbrot set, named after Benoit Mandelbrot, is a fractal. Fractals are objects that display self-similarity at various scales. Magnifying a fractal reveals small-scale details similar to the large-scale characteristics. Although the Mandelbrot set is self-similar at magnified scales, the small scale details are not identical to the whole. In fact, the Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex. Yet the process of generating it is based on an extremely simple equation involving complex numbers. Read more… 

Video on the Mandelbrot Set... Great!

Mandelbrot Generator - Fraqtive is an open source, multi-platform generator of the Mandelbrot family fractals. It uses very fast algorithms supporting SSE2 and multi-core processors. It generates high quality anti-aliased images and renders 3D scenes using OpenGL.