The pattern of the sunflower seeds allows the flower to fit the most seed heads in the least space. Consider the sunflower, which often is used as an example of Fibonacci spirals. (For a helpful video, click here.)Ī Fibonacci spiral in nature may certainly be beautiful, but it generally has a very utilitarian purpose. Why is this significant? The sequence appears throughout nature – from a tiny snail shell to the nodes of a pinecone to the storm clouds surrounding the eye of a hurricane to the spiraling stars of galaxies to the whorls of your own fingerprints. And then, if you connect the boxes with an ever-increasing spiral, you end up with a Fibonacci spiral. When you draw the sequence as ever-increasing boxes, you create a Fibonacci rectangle. So the next number in the sequence above would be 21+34=55. The next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it: 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, etc. (Fibonacci also introduced Arabic numerals to Europe.) The spiral design begins with the Fibonacci sequence, named for an Italian mathematician (Leonardo de Pisa, known as Fibonacci), who introduced the sequence to western European mathematics in 1202 the sequence had been described even earlier in Indian mathematics. The redesigned central campus at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire honors math, science, art – even music – with two Fibonacci spirals embedded in the South Schofield Lawn. It’s only appropriate that in a place devoted to higher education, even the site design should reflect the search for knowledge.
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