The Code
Presented by the BBC2 t.v. programme; “The Code”, and fictionalised in Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” a sequence of numbers, called the Fibonacci series underlies many features of nature and esthetics.
The Fibonacci series 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,…. can be generated by adding the two previous numbers in the sequence. Remarkably these numbers appear everywhere in nature. Count the number of spirals on a sunflower head, fir cone, or pineapple, and it will be a Fibonacci number. Likewise the number of petals on a flower.
As the Fibonacci numbers get larger, the ratio of two sequential numbers starts to approximate the Golden Ratio. It's this ratio that can be used to generate the complex spirals of the Nautilus shell.
The Fibonacci series 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,…. can be generated by adding the two previous numbers in the sequence. Remarkably these numbers appear everywhere in nature. Count the number of spirals on a sunflower head, fir cone, or pineapple, and it will be a Fibonacci number. Likewise the number of petals on a flower.
As the Fibonacci numbers get larger, the ratio of two sequential numbers starts to approximate the Golden Ratio. It's this ratio that can be used to generate the complex spirals of the Nautilus shell.