[jofer]

It may not be immediately obvious to folks outside of geoscience, but the main way something like this is useful is as a measure/metric to compare things. Looking at the number of faces of fractured pieces isn't normally something we do often in geology.

Sure, the pieces average 6 faces when materials are relatively homogenous and iostropic (i.e. no preferential direction to break in and no free surface nearby). However, as they note in the article, this isn't always the case. Things like mud flats and other cases with very anisotropic materials and/or free surfaces nearby don't fracture with the same average.

This is a good example of a potential metric that could be used to give some clues about overall material behavior even if all you have are the broken remains.

Fractal dimension is also pretty esoteric. However, it's somewhat widely used in geoscience, even though what we're measuring isn't _actually_ fractal. It's still a very useful comparative metric, though, because it lets us measure how complex an interface or surface is quantitatively and scale-independent.

[7777777phil]

It reminds me of how we use measures like the VIX in finance; not because markets are actually log-normal, but because having a standardized way to compare "choppiness" across different periods is incredibly useful. I like your fractal dimension example too. Even if real coastlines aren't truly fractal, being able to say "this coastline has dimension 1.3 vs 1.7" gives you meaningful information about erosion patterns, wave energy, and rock composition. The cube metric could work similarly for forensic geology.

[boi694206]

nerdy ahh jit needs to sybau