LESSON 3: BEHAVIOR OF NATURE

From the previous lessons we have, much have been said about natural regularities of
nature. Much of the things that surrounds us, possess the pleasing beauty in their visual
appearance that creates the feeling of satisfaction and harmony within the image itself. The
beauty, balance and behavior of nature is due to the impact of the golden ratio that describes
the different natural regularities present in our environment. These regularities that we see and
experience in our daily life includes fractals, symmetry, tessellation, iterations, stripes and dots,
waves, foams cracks, meanders and trees that describes the behavior of the natural world.
Golden ratio therefore describes the beauty of the nature and the growth patterns of many
living things including the inspiration of the creation of non-living things including the universe.

Previously, we pointed out the intrinsic structure of the honeycomb of which is

constructed with regular repeating hexagons. The beauty of the design does not only rely on
the physical appearance of the object, but rather the fact the structures will hold the least
amount wax to store honey giving it the strong construction without any gaps between each
hexagons. This idea explains to us the value of utilizing maximum space without neglecting the
strength of the construction we are doing.

Figure 31 Honeycombs

Another, small creatures yet considered best engineers are the spiders. These creatures
create a beautiful pattern in the construction of their spider web and this is done using the
innate steps of spider. Moreover, animals’ stripes and spots, like the tigers and zebras are due
to the chemical pigmentation on the animal skin. On the other the spiraling patterns on the
growth of plants and some animals can also be observed in our environment. The nautilus shell
perfectly illustrates in its structure the golden spiral which is called the logarithmic spiral. More
over the spiral arrangement of the seeds of sunflower are perfectly arranged in which no two
seeds overlap with each other. This arrangement allows the seed to grow properly and provides
much space for the sunlight to penetrate. Similarly, the spiral arrangement of the succulent
petals is the same with the sunflower seed arrangement.
In relation to the golden spiral, typhoon structure is another natural phenomenon
associated with it. The spiral structure of this phenomenon is the basis on how long is the
coverage of the typhoon.

Lighting on the other hand, during storms illustrates fractal. Similarly, trees branches are
also considered as fractals in nature. Another pattern in nature is crack. During dry seasons, we
can see some openings in our land. This opening is a crack which serves as the materials to
relieve stress of the land. Additionally, these cracks explain the elasticity of the object. On the
contrary, we can also see cracks from the barks of the trees indicating that it is weak.

Many things in our environment can be modelled mathematically and describes the
natural existence of the object. The curves on the bridge structures are concept of parabola
modeled by the quadratic equation. Moreover, our daily processes like the simple arithmetic
when we buy things can be modeled by simple linear equations. Hence, most it not all activities
in our daily life is organized by mathematics, making it indispensable in our human activities.