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| Photo: Jay Bennett |
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Photo: YouTubeNumberphile
The golden ratio is an almost mythical number that
you may have heard of in various areas of architecture or design. For
example, many claim the ancient Greek Parthenon has numerous examples of the golden ratio in its design. Others have said that the most beautiful people are those with features aligned according to the golden ratio.
These claims are rough approximations of the golden ratio at best and pseudoscience at worst. The truth is much more awesome.
The wonderful YouTube channel Numberphile
recently spoke to Ben Sparks, a mathematician working at the University
of Bath, to reveal the true nature of the golden ratio: 1 plus the
square root of 5 over 2, or approximately 1.62, represented in
mathematics by the Greek letter phi. In geometry, this number produces some fascinating patterns, such as a golden rectangle.
(If you take the shorter length of a golden rectangle and make a square
with that length, and then remove the area of that square from the
golden rectangle, you are left with another, smaller golden rectangle.)
As
the video below explains, the golden ratio can also be considered the
"most irrational" of all irrational numbers. An irrational number is one
that cannot be expressed by a fraction of integers, or whole numbers.
Pi, for example, is an irrational number. It is almost 22/7, but not
quite.
A mathematical method for exploring irrational numbers is to play a kind of game. The idea is that you have a flower, and you are trying to place seeds on the face of the flower in such a way that you can fit as many as possible. If you place a seed, and then rotate the flower face a certain amount, and place another seed, and then repeat this process, what would be the ideal amount to rotate the flower face?
Source: Popular Mechanics and Numberphile Channel (YouTube)
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