GOLDEN RATIO AND ITS APPLICATIONS

Dr Manoj Sharma1 & Rishabh Shukla2

2

HEAD Department of Mathematics, Rustamji Institute of Technology, Gwalior, India. Department of Electronics and Communication, Rustamji Institute of Technology, Gwalior, India.

Abstract
Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics. Thus the primary focus of this paper is to present a general view about the Golden Ratio and its various application s in Engineering and science.

Keywords: Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Series, Phidias, Architecture, Art, Geometry. I. INTRODUCTION

In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.61803398874989. Other names frequently used for the golden ratio are the golden section and golden mean. Other terms encountered include extreme and mean ratio, medial section, divine proportion, divine section, golden proportion, golden cut, golden number, and mean of Phidias. Golden ratio is denoted by the Greek lowercase letter phi (). The figure below illustrates the geometric

relationship that defines this constant.

This equation has one positive solution in the set of algebraic irrational numbers:

I.
a. Aesthetics

APPLICATIONS OF GOLEDN RATIO

Do we surround ourselves with the Golden Ratio because we find it aesthetically pleasing, or do we find it aesthetically pleasing because we are surrounded by it. If you were going to design a rectangular TV screen or swimming pool, would one shape be more pleasing to the eye than others? Since the early Greeks, a ratio of length to width of approximately 1.618, has been considered the most visually appealing. This ratio, called the golden ratio, not only appears in art and architecture, but also in natural structures. In the 1930's, New York's Pratt Institute laid out rectangular frames of different proportions, and asked several hundred art students to choose which they found most pleasing. The winner was one with Golden Ratio proportions. You can carry out a test for yourself at www.jimloy.com/poll/poll.htm. So we find that the objects related with the Golden Ratio are more aesthetically pleasing. b. Architecture Golden Ratio plays an important role in the architecture, ranging from appropriate descriptions of designs to guiding the designers intuition. It is a number that has fascinated humans throughout the centuries. As we take a look at modern and ancient architecture we

soon realize that an increasing number of buildings with exotic shapes fall in the league of Golden Ratio. The ratio of the width and height of the Parthenon in Greece is approximately equal to the golden ratio; see Fig. 1. The Parthenon's facade as well as elements of its facade and elsewhere are said by some to be circumscribed by golden rectangles. In the same way the geometrical analysis of the Great Mosque of Kairouan reveals a consistent application of the golden ratio throughout the design, according to Boussora and Mazouz. It is found in the overall proportion of the plan and in the dimensioning of the prayer space, the court, and the minaret. Boussora and Mazouz also examined earlier archaeological theories about the mosque, and demonstrate the geometric constructions based on the golden ratio by applying these constructions to the plan of the mosque to test their hypothesis. In the same way The Taj Mahal of Agra, India also shows the compatibility with the Golden Rectangles.

Fig.1 The Parthenon in Greece

Fig2. The Taj Mahal in India.

c. Art
As the Golden Section is found in the design and beauty of nature, it can also be used to achieve beauty and balance in the design of art. This is only a tool though, and not a rule, for composition. The Golden Section was used extensively by Leonardo Da Vinci. Note in the Fig.3 how all the key dimensions of the room and the table in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" were based on the Golden Section, which was known in the Renaissance period as The Divine Proportion. In "The Sacrament of the Last Supper," Salvador Dali framed his painting in a

golden rectangle. Following Da Vinci's lead, Dali positioned the table exactly at the golden section of the height of his painting. He positioned the two disciples at Christ's side at the golden sections of the width of the composition. In addition, the windows in the background are formed by a large dodecahedron. Dodecahedrons consist of 12 pentagons, which exhibit phi relationships in their proportions.

Fig. 3 The Sacrament of the Last Supper

Fig.4 The Vitruvian Man

d. Music
James Tenney reconceived his piece For Ann (rising), which consists of up to twelve computer-generated upwardly glissandoing tones (see Shepard tone), as having each tone start so it is the golden ratio (in between an equal tempered minor and major sixth) below the previous tone, so that the combination tones produced by all consecutive tones are a lower or higher pitch already, or soon to be, produced. Ern Lendvai analyzes Bla Bartk's works as being based on two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic scale,[39] though other music scholars reject that analysis.[2] In Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta the xylophone progression occurs at the intervals 1:2:3:5:8:5:3:2:1.[40] French composer Erik Satie used thegolden ratio in several of his pieces, including Sonneries de la Rose+Croix.The golden ratio is also apparent in the organization of the sections in the music of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau(Reflections in Water), from Images (1st series, 1905), in which "the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals34, 21, 13 and 8, and the main climax sits at the phi position.

e. Industrial design
Some sources claim that the golden ratio is commonly used in everyday design, for example in the shapes of postcards, credit cards, match box, playing cards, posters, wide-screen televisions, photographs, and light switch plates. If you take a close look at the Credit card in your pocket you will find that the ratio of its length to breadth gives us the golden ratio.

Fig.5 Credit card

Fig.6 Toyaota logo

f. Nature
Adolf Zeising, whose main interests were mathematics and philosophy, found the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves. He extended his research to the skeletons of animals and the branching of their veins and nerves, to the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals, even to the use of proportion in artistic endeavors. In these phenomena he saw the golden ratio operating as a universal law. In connection with his scheme for golden-ratio-based human body proportions, Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form. In 2003, Volkmar Weiss and Harald Weiss analyzed psychometric data and theoretical considerations and concluded that the golden ratio underlies the clock cycle of brain waves. In 2008 this was empirically confirmed by a group of neurobiologists. In 2010, the journal Science reported that the golden ratio is present at the atomic scale in the magnetic resonance of spins in cobalt niobate crystals. Several researchers have proposed connections between the golden ratio and human genome DNA.

g. Geometry
The number turns up frequently in geometry, particularly in figures with pentagonal symmetry. The length of a regular pentagon's diagonal is times its side. The vertices of a regular icosahedron are those of three mutually orthogonal golden rectangles. There is no known general algorithm to arrange a given number of nodes evenly on a sphere, for any of several definitions of even distribution. However, a useful approximation results from dividing the sphere into parallel bands of equal area and placing one node in each band at longitudes spaced by a golden section of the circle, i.e. 360/ 222.5. This method was used to arrange the 1500 mirrors of the student-participatory satellite Starshine-3.The golden ratio plays an important role in the geometry of pentagrams. Each intersection of edges sections other edges in the golden ratio. Also, the ratio of the length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the two intersecting edges (a side of the pentagon in the pentagram's

center) is , as the four-color illustration shows. The pentagram includes ten isosceles color triangles: five acute and five obtuse isosceles triangles. In all of them, the ratio of the longer side to the shorter side is . The acute triangles are golden triangles. The obtuse isosceles triangles are golden gnomons.

Fig.7 Golden Rectangle

Fig.8 Pentagram

h. Finance
The golden ratio and related numbers are used in the financial markets. It is used in trading ed algorithms, applications and strategies. Some typical forms include: the Fibonacci fan, the Fibonacci arc, Fibonacci retracement and the Fibonacci time extension.

II.

CONCLUSION

Thus we have observed that the implications of Golden Ratio are vast ranging from the art to architecture to music to Industrial designs to aesthetics and Geometry. So we can conclude that any object designed by keeping in mind the golden ratio will be mor pleasing as more compared with the normal design.

IV.

REFERENCES

[1] Livio, Mario (2002). The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number (http:/ / books. google.com/books?id=w9dmPwAACAAJ). New York: Broadway google.com/books?id=w9dmPwAACAAJ). Books. ISBN 0-7679-0815-5. .

[2] Piotr Sadowski, The Knight on His Quest: Symbolic Patterns of Transition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Cranbury NJ: Associated University Presses, 1996 [3] Richard A Dunlap, The Golden Ratio and Fibonacci Numbers, World Scientific Publishing, 1997 [4] Euclid, Elements (http:/ / aleph0. clarku. edu/ ~djoyce/ java/ elements/ toc. html), Book 6, Definition 3. [5] Summerson John, Heavenly Mansions: And Other Essays on Architecture (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963) p. 37. "And the same applies in architecture, to the rectangles representing these and other ratios (e.g. the 'golden cut'). The sole value of these ratios is that they are intellectually fruitful and suggest the rhythms of modular design." [6] Jay Hambidge, Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1920 [7] William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler, Universal Principles of Design: A CrossDisciplinary Reference, Gloucester MA: Rockport