The Beauty of Numbers – 1
- POSTED ON: 7 Jul, 2017
- TOTAL VIEWS: 1683 Views
- POSTED BY: Chari Vijayaraghavan
- ARTICLE POINTS: 100 Points
Did you know why the ‘natural numbers’ starting from 1,2,3,4…. are called so? It’s because they can be found in nature! We can see ‘1’ lake, ‘2’ elephants, ‘3’ trees etc. Zero became accepted only about thousands of years ago! People also needed something to identify ‘nothingness’ or sometimes to be used as a separator or placeholder. In this series, we shall look at some numbers and patterns in nature.
The first is the Golden Ratio of 1.618 approximately. Two quantities are said to be in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. This is found often in nature and related to the Fibonacci series where each number is the sum of the previous 2 numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on. We shall look at the Fibonacci series in more detail later.
Here are a few examples of the golden ratio or a golden spiral in nature and design. Part of the spiral is depicted so that you know where to look. Can you spot it? Move the slider from right to left to unveil.
1. A plant
2. A galaxy
3. Floral inspiration for a staircase in architecture
There’s some beauty about mathematics after all – from small plants to giant galaxies. See you soon, with more of these!