Hartvigsen, G. 2000. The analysis of leaf shape using fractal geometry. Accepted, The American Biology Teacher.

Conclusion

I believe this exercise is useful and practical for a broad range of students. Students at all levels can enjoy counting the number of boxes on graph paper intersected by leaves. The determination of fractal dimension may be done either by calculating the slope of lines by hand (change in y over change in x and compared for just leaves from the tops and bottoms of plants) or with a statistical program on the computer. There also are opportunities for higher-level students to test hypotheses using all the leaves along the stems of replicated plants to look for non-linear trends in leaf shape along the stem of plants, across species, and under different environmental growth conditions. The importance of shape also makes for interesting discussions because shape discrimination is so easy for us to do visually yet has generally escaped quantitative analysis in science. Finally, in this exercise students will most likely find that shape does in fact change along the stem of this plant which can lead them to question how shape matters for both plants and the organisms that depend on them.