PREPARED BY: MS. ETHEL D.

NABOR,LPT
Who IS Fibonacci?
Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician. He was really
named Leonardo de Pisa but his nickname was Fibonacci.

About 800 years ago, in 1202, he wrote himself a Maths

problem all about rabbits that went like this:

"A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded by

a wall. How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from that
pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair
breed a new pair from which the second month on becomes
productive?"
(Liber abbaci, pp. 283-284)
Fibonacci’s Like all good mathematicians he stayed
Rabbits! working on this problem for months and
eventually came up with a solution:
A load of…
•
Fibonacci’s rabbit theory turned out not to be
true BUT the sequence he created IS incredibly
useful…
•
The sequence goes:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …. Can you work
out which
numbers come
next?
Continue the sequence…
•
Fibonacci’s sequence is made by adding the two previous
numbers together to create the next, starting with zero and one:

•
0+1=1
1+1=2
1+2=3
2+3=5
3+5=8
…keep going in your notebooks!
•
The sequence Fibonacci created may
not have solved his rabbit reproduction
problem
•
BUT other mathematicians looked at his
numbers and started seeing them all
over the place.
Find Fibonacci!
Other patterns in nature…
•
Nature may be full of Fibonacci but not
EVERY plant or flower has a Fibonacci
number.
•
There are plenty of other interesting
patterns to look out for.
•
Can you think of any patterns?
1. Symmetry…

•
SYMMETRY – You can find symmetry in
leaves, flowers, insects and animals.

•
Can you think of any examples?
2. Spirals…

Can you
count the
spirals??
A
Fibonacci
number?
3. Fractals…
•
Some plants have fractal patterns. A fractal
is a never-ending pattern that repeats
itself at different scales.

•
A fractal continually reproduces copies of itself in
various sizes and/or directions.

•
Fractals are extremely complex,
sometimes infinitely complex.
A never-ending pattern
Tessellation…
•
Sometimes in nature we find tessellation.
A tessellation is a repeating pattern of polygons that
covers a flat surface with no gaps or overlaps.

•
Think about when you tile a floor. No gaps and no
overlapping tiles! There are regular tessellations
(all the same shape tiles) and irregular (a mix of
shapes).

•
Can you think of any examples in nature?
Where is
THIS
tessellation
from?!