Apropos of Nothing v.14

Golden section as in golden ratio? Yeah, I had forgotten about that. I'll have to look at the photo again . . .

Yup that's it Agent 59. It's in flowers, seeds, etc. Everywhere in nature.

Yes ma'am. I, bein' yer jes' sorta average persun, don' always think ta see stuff like that wen I firs luk at a picshure. We studeed in skul fer shure, but thin I fergot.

The other types of sea snails also have the little trap door. It is exceptionally cute on periwinkles. I don't know about land snails...an interesting question to research. And to answer another question, yes, some mollusks eat other types of mollusks. The moon snails are the most voracious. They actually lick a hole in a clam shell with their raspy, file-like tongue. If you have ever seen shells with round holes in them, it was likely eaten by one of these guys or their cousin the whelk (also known as an oyster drill). And to throw around a bit more terminology (in case you have reason to converse with a biologist at above-mentioned cocktail party) the tongue is called a "radula"

yuck. golden ration or not, it's plain ugly! If I saw something like that on one of my plants, I would freak out a little.

Okay - I can just see myself conversing eloquently.

Seriously, though, you know how "coincidences" happen - when the same topic comes up in a week in several different circumstances? So maybe I will be at a cocktail party with a biologist. And I'll be the most fascinating person there!

P.S. Who would ever have thought that you could lick a hole in a shell?

LOL Kathy, we cross posted. I was going to say, I don't remember anything about a golden ratio, even though I have learned a bunch about sea creatures in order to teach a unit about the beach ecosystem. Please enlighten me!

So help me to reconcile the concept of the Golden Ratio with the concept of Fractals. Or maybe it's just simple and one concept "fits inside" another.

Okay, we girls seriously need to have a weekend getaway at the beach in the winter drinking wine and discussing things like this . . .

Holly, here's some math for you:
http://www.jimloy.com/geometry/golden.htm

think 'nautilus'. And patterns within patterns within patterns.

And
http://www.relativitybook.com/CoolStuff/erkfractals.html

I'll just throw out a site with visual aids because I like diagrams and pictures. It's a proportional ratio that has been identified as a constant in both natural and man-made things:

http://www.goldennumber.net/goldsect.htm

My site too complicated for you, huh? I think your brain has been drained by recent activity elsewhere. I was just glad I got to post links before you, oh Google Queen! LOL!

Woo hoo!! flying fingers!

LOL. That IS true - my brain is kind of flying in lala land this weekend. Circumstances have been surreal . . .

The Golden Section is a design principle used frequently in architecture. That's the only reason I know about it. But if you start to look for it, you can begin to recognize it easily. It's simple math.

MHF, I think your students know a lot more than I do about the beach ecosystem! A beach getaway would be a perfect. Maybe when the weather gets hot and sunny.......

Keep that thought, Portland! Hot and sunny! Hot and sunny!

Fascinating math. I have been stuck too long teaching first grade math and need to expand my horizons. They love science and learning about the unusual (and sometimes disgusting) aspects of the natural world. Just think what fun I had describing how starfish eat a meal. Dinner is long past, so I am safe posting this pic of sea star stomach pushed out of its mouth and in the act of consuming some clam interior. Hope nobody comes across this post while eating breakfast tomorrow.

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_17.htm

Come one, Judi. Simple math? I just eye it . . . I figure it's in my biology. :-)

Yes, I want hot and sunny!!!!! or at least warmer and overcast instead of all this rain. I have been depressed and reclusive this weekend. Partly this is because of some rather horrifying events here on supposedly placid Vashon (NOT) involving former students' families. How is it possible that on one Friday evening I learn of not one, but 2 dads of children who were in my class in the last 3 years whose fathers have been arrested for child molestation and rape. I am just sick and want to crawl in a hole and never come out.

Oh, Holly, I'm so sorry. That is just unimaginable. Thank goodness people like you are there to pick up the pieces and give these kids some sense of safety.

I'm going to have to get a picture of that golden spiral diagram for my slide show on sea snails. Very cool.

I just feel awful for the children, having their dads in prison and also having the rest of the community unfairly look askance or pity them and talk behind their backs. This can be a really ugly place sometimes.

Holly, what disturbing events. If only life were as simple as math.

You may have gotten there already, but isn't there also a perfect spiral that apears in nature and architecture - the Fibonacci spiral (Fibonacci sequence - every turn after the second is the sum of the two proceeding) - I remember seeing it in a picture of a seed cone.

Oh, Pony, great minds are alike, we crossed.

This message was edited May 31, 2010 6:27 AM

Wow. Holly, I'm sorry to hear that.

Is this golden section thingie like the fibonacci sequence? Math makes my brain explode, I just can't grasp it at all- but Tracy has tried (in vain) to explain the fibonacci sequence in the moon snail shells to me.

LOL! Laurie you posted while I was typing.

The spiral is also based on the golden section, which is really just a ratio. I find it fascinating that so much in nature is base on math. So cool.

Pony - the sequence is actually quite easy:

every turn after the second is the sum of the two proceeding

1,1, 2, 3,5,8,13,21

1+1=2
1+2=3
2+3=5 and just keep going.

In a physical sense, think about making a spiral plant bed - each section going up in size by adding the two previous together.

I'm not actually numerate (although I can now do the 16 times table converting kilometers to miles! 1.6 km to a mile - eccentric little country that we are, everything but distance/speed is metric), but this one is so visual it makes sense to me - as does the golden section. I never understood why I couldn't take Geometry before I passed Algebra - I got geometry - it was visual, I never did pass algebra. School can be sooooooo frustrating.

Portland - I think that is the other way around: So much in Maths is based on Nature. Nature got there first. Ahhhh, the arrogance of man and woman. Just because we note it - does not mean we made it up.

xo.

Excellent point, Laurie! But, I don't think we made up math. I think it has always been in existence, but we made a set of rules and symbols to express it. I think math is inherent in nature.

Or that the math is based on nature . . .

Oops. Shoulda read first. I love this discussion . . .

*head explodes*

I can relate Pony. Simply attached an article about giant snails and we are back at school! LOL Love the dialogue..but math was never my thing. My poor Dad spent hours every day helping me with my Algebra in HS. Passed the classes, but geeze when my daughters came to me for help when they were in HS..I looked at the problems and BLANK!

But math is not only algebra and such! Don't think of it as those classes you hated in school and all those rules about solving equations. Music is math! Even the ideal facial structure is math. The word "math" is just a word (a four letter word) that we use to describe order. The order of the natural world is beautiful. It's as though humans can't leave well enough alone, and we have to "name" everything and give it rules.

Now as soon as I wrote those thoughts I remember the necessity of formulas for the moment of inertia of beams, lest everything comes tumbling down. Don't mess with Mother Nature disguised as gravity!

By the way, has anyone heard from Lynn since her surgery? I hope she is feeling better.

Ok..yesterday giant snails, tonight "Peeps the Hummingbird".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7xBLvMIBZU

OMG Bea- that was wonderful. I actually teared up a little. :*)

Oh, I saw this. It's so sweet.