Part 9/17:
The concept of critical points—moments when a system is on the cusp of a phase change—is central to understanding power laws. Consider magnets: below the Curie temperature, they are strongly magnetic; above, they are not. Near this critical temperature, magnetic domains form fractal patterns, and the size distribution of these domains follows a power law. These patterns reveal a scale-free structure, where no particular size dominates, and the behavior looks similar at all levels.