Ogando Olivares

Gabriela Ogando O.
Sandra Alvarado
Academic Writing

The spiral of nature

One thing I will always try to remember is the day my dad showed me the meaning
of nature. I was ten years old, too old for games, million questions in my head, and too
young to understand the complexity of the universe and the meaning of the things around
me.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon at home when I sat down with him on the sofa in the
living room and asked full of innocence and wonder- about the pattern in nature and the
meaning of the components that make it what it is.
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Dad, why is nature the way it is?

He was surprised and amazed by the question, impressed that a ten year old was
wondering about such heavy questions. He started talking about something called de
Golden Ratio, a mathematical pattern that just repeats itself in nature and gives meaning
to almost every pattern around us.
He said every single detail there is to know about this subject and tried his best to put
everything into words that I could understand. I was full of wonder and joy, just seeing
him explain something that seemed so magical. How a Greek infinite number found
thousands of years ago could be able to unite different areas of math together and
interestingly, be found in many places in nature.
He explained that this happened with the help of the numbers equation and the
graph behind it; it had the form of a spiral. Looks like the nautilus shell we found at the
beach once! I said excitedly when he showed it to me.
As the sun started to set, he began to explain the pattern in nature with books, articles
and pictures. And thats when he taught me something called the Fibonacci sequence A
list of numbers defined by the golden ratio, and how this sequence came back to the spiral

Ogando Olivares

when you put it in graphics. How even things as small as atoms when they vibrate, its
frequencies are described by this number. How the sequence and the Golden Ratio
described the natural arrangements of sunflower seeds and leaves on many plants. If you
look closer to the center of a sunflower, youd see how they follow a series of clockwise
and counterclockwise sequence that looks exactly like the spiral. And the most amazing
thing I learned about that is that things as simple as plants are extremely precise with their
math, a sunflower can have 233 seeds one way and 144 on the other, when you divide
these numbers, you get the number of the golden ratio.
I was listening so carefully to every single detail, seeing every picture he showed me
as if, I misheard a single word I would lose the opportunity to learn the secrets the world
had to offer.
As the night fell and the stars dressed the sky, I was left speechless. In those few
hours I began to understand the meaning behind the order of things as simple as flower
petals and honeybees, or things as amazing as stars and the particles of our DNA; because
all of those things came back to this number or this spiral.
I was amazed by the fact that a single equation and the pattern that followed, would
be able to describe all those elements that make the universe what it is. How we even have
it in our bodies, like the shape of our ears follows the spiral and our body proportions
follows the sequence. Its so magnificent to think how we all come together in a single
equation that is able to describe part of whom we are and how we are made.
That day I understood why my dad had such admiration for mathematics and the
universe. I believe that day was the day my wonder and hunger for knowledge and
discovery started.