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The Gosper curve, also known as Peano-Gosper Curve, named after Bill Gosper, also known as the flowsnake (a spoonerism of snowflake), is a space-filling curve. It is a fractal object similar in its construction to the dragon curve and the Hilbert curve.
Contents
Lindenmayer System
The Gosper curve can be represented using an L-System with rules as follows:
In this case both A and B mean to move forward, + means to turn left 60 degrees and - means to turn right 60 degrees - using a "turtle"-style program such as Logo.
Logo
A Logo program to draw the Gosper curve using turtle graphics (online version):
to rg :st :ln
make "st :st - 1
make "ln :ln / sqrt 7
if :st > 0 [rg :st :ln rt 60 gl :st :ln rt 120 gl :st :ln lt 60 rg :st :ln lt 120 rg :st :ln rg :st :ln lt 60 gl :st :ln rt 60]
if :st = 0 [fd :ln rt 60 fd :ln rt 120 fd :ln lt 60 fd :ln lt 120 fd :ln fd :ln lt 60 fd :ln rt 60]
end
to gl :st :ln
make "st :st - 1
make "ln :ln / sqrt 7
if :st > 0 [lt 60 rg :st :ln rt 60 gl :st :ln gl :st :ln rt 120 gl :st :ln rt 60 rg :st :ln lt 120 rg :st :ln lt 60 gl :st :ln]
if :st = 0 [lt 60 fd :ln rt 60 fd :ln fd :ln rt 120 fd :ln rt 60 fd :ln lt 120 fd :ln lt 60 fd :ln]
end
The program can be invoked, for example, with rg 4 300, or alternatively gl 4 300.
Properties
The space filled by the curve is called the Gosper island. The first few iterations of it are shown below:
The Gosper Island can tile the plane. In fact, seven copies of the Gosper island can be joined together to form a shape that is similar, but scaled up by a factor of √7 in all dimensions. As can be seen from the diagram below, performing this operation with an intermediate iteration of the island leads to a scaled-up version of the next iteration. Repeating this process indefinitely produces a tessellation of the plane. The curve itself can likewise be extended to an infinite curve filling the whole plane.