Fractile Fairy Tale.

• Author: Peterson, Eric

Fractiles Inc. wants to magnetize the world of geometry.

The Boulder-based company emerged in one day in 1996 when Beverly Johnson, co-founder and sole full-time employee, was killing time. "One day I was idly cutting up a magnetic business card," she recalled. "A light came on."

That light led Johnson to team with longtime friend and Fractiles cofounder Marc Pelletier -- creator of the Zometool mathematical construction kit -- and to develop a magnetic tiling kit, Fractiles-7. (Pelletier has since left the company but has designs "in the pipeline" for future Fractiles products.)

Like Zometool, Fractiles-7 is a game that uses principles of geometry to create a game composed of cool, colorful patterns.

Fractiles-7 consists of 192 brightly colored interlocking magnetic tiles and a black textured steel board. The made-up word "fractiles" combines "fractal" and "tile." Fractal means a complex, detailed geometric shape that is similar at any level of magnification from the atomic to the immense. Fractals occur in nature and in mathematics. (For more, see the Internet for countless examples and explanations.)

"Fractal" is a fairly new word for something we recognize intuitively. Examples include a rugged coastline which, when seen from space, becomes ever more complex as the viewer moves closer. Coastlines turn into rugged boulders, then into sand, and then finally into sub-atomic particles. Yet at every level of magnification the pattern is similar.

Fractals can boggle the mind. But Fractiles-7, the magnetic...