Customer Reviews

Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth

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This is the first book I have so far encountered on interface growth to treat the subject in a simple, intuitive and entertaining manner. All the basic mathematical concepts are explained, the book is easy to read and contains plenty of illustrations and examples from real life. Barabasi and Stanley show how processes ranging from accumulation of snow on car windows, to bacterial colony growth on agar surfacees, are governed by similiar mathematical laws. Exercises are conceptual as well as mathematical, with many questions asking for discussion or further research. This book is essential for novices and experts alike.

I'm not into surfaces and have only used a small part of this book for one purpose: for an introduction to self affine scaling. The topic is presented very systematically, with nice examples. Especially nice is the binomial model of multiaffine scaling. Multiaffine scaling is supposed to appear in "soft" fluid turbulence and is often mislabeled multifractal scaling, which is a horse of a different color altogether!

This book does not deseves critics in completelly perfect