Lesson 1: Patterns And Numbers in Nature

Some of the real world fractal examples around us:

1. Fern – As you look deeper and deeper, you see a never ending repetitive pattern.
2. Koch Snowflake – A beautiful example of a fractal with infinite perimeter but finite area.The idea is, make an
equilateral triangle. Now make another equilateral triangle above the previous one, but in opposite direction.
You’ll see small equilateral triangles on the boundary. Keep doing the same for them, and keep doing, keep
doing…
When you keep doing it, soon after some depth, you’ll start seeing the resemblance of pattern with a snowflake.
3. Fractal Antenna – Above example of “koch snowflake” shows a fractal of perimeter increasing infinitely while
it’s area can be bounded. Using such property, fractal antenna was invented, using a self-similar design to
maximize the length of material that can receive much weaker signals and transmit signals over long distance
without compromising the area and volume taken by the antenna due to it’s fractal nature. This is very compact
and have useful applications cellular telephone and microwave communications.
4. ‘Fibonacci Sequence – is a recursive sequence, generated by adding the two previous numbers, the first two
numbers of the sequence being 0 and 1.

Another example is if you look at the bottom of pine cone, and count clockwise and anti – clockwise number of
spirals, they turn out to be adjacent fibonacci numbers.

Let’s have a look at a property of fibonacci numbers. I’m gonna write continuous sums of squared fibonacci
numbers.
Squared Fibonacci Sequence: 0, 1, 1, 4, 9, 25, 64, …
Continuous sums:
0=0x1
0+1=1x1
0+1+1=1x2
0+1+1+4=2x3
0+1+1+4+9=3x5
0 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 9 + 25 = 5 x 8 … and so on. (You see every time product of the sum is two consecutive fibonacci
numbers)
Well, there’s a mathematical explanation for the pattern we see above. Suppose you have squares of sides
representing fibonacci numbers, and assemble them in the way shown below. The above pattern is nothing but
area of the rectangle formed by joining the squares (continued fibonacci squares sum).

Fibonacci spiral recurs throughout the nature — in the seed heads of sunflower, the petals of a rose, the eye
of the hurricane, the curve of a wave, even the spiral of galaxies.

When we keep comparing ratios of two consecutive fibonacci numbers, as we move further in the sequence,
the ratio approaches a value of 1.618034… which is called Φ or better, the golden ratio. This ratio has a beauty
of special kind and is important to us. Why? — The golden ratio appears everywhere — DNA, human body, eye
of hurricane etc. — it appears in various structures of nature.

The Golden Ratio in Arts

- The golden ratio can be used to achieve beauty, balance and harmony in art, architecture and design. It
can be used as a tool in art and design to achieve balance in the composition. Check out some examples of
golden ratio in arts.
The exterior dimension of the Pathernon in Athens, Greece embodies the golden ratio.

Euclid was the first to give definition of the golden ratio as “a dividing line in the extreme and mean ratio” in his book the
“Elements”. He proved the link of the numbers to the construction of the pentagram, which is now known as golden
ratio. Each intersections to the other edges of a pentagram is a golden ratio. Also the ratio of the length of the shorter
segment to the segment bounded by the two intersecting lines is a golden ratio.

Leonardo da Vinci was into many interests such as invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music,
mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, botany, writing, history and cartography. He used the golden
ratio to define the fundamental portions in his works. He incorporated the golden ratio in his own paintings such as the
Vitruvian Man, The Last Supper, Mona Lisa and St. Jerome in the Wilderness.

Michaelangelo di Lodovico Simon was considered the greatest living artists of his time. He used golden ratio in his
painting “The Creation of Adam” which can be seen on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. His painting used the golden
ratio showing how God’s finger and Adam’s finger meet precisely at the golden ratio point of the weight and the height of
the area that contains them.
GOLDEN RATIO IN ARCHITECTURE
Some of the architectural structures that exhibit the application of the Golden ratio are the following:
1. The Great Pyramid of Giza built 4700 BC in Ahmes Papyrus of Egypt is with proportion according to a “Golden
Ratio”. The length of each side of the base is 756 feet with a height of 481 feet. The ratio of the base to the height is
roughly 1.5717, which is close to the Golden ratio.
2. Notre Dame is a Gothic Cathedral in Paris, which was built in between 1163 and 1250. It appears to have a golden
ratio in a number of its key proportions of designs.
3. The Taj Mahal in India used the golden ratio in its construction and was completed in 1648. The order and proportion
of the arches of the Taj Mahal on the main structure keep reducing proportionately following the golden ratio.
4. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres in Paris, France also exhibits the Golden ratio.
5. In the United Nation Building, the window configuration reveal golden proportion.
6. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, erected in 1889 is an iron lattice. The base is broader while it narrows down the
top, perfectly following the golden ratio.
7. The CN Tower in Toronto, the tallest tower and freestanding structure in the world, contains the golden ratio in its
design. The ratio of observation deck at 342 meters to the total height of 553.33 is 0.618 or phi, the reciprocal of phi.

5. Symmetry – is pervasive in living things. Animals mainly have bilateral or mirror symmetry, as do the leaves of
plants and some flowers such as orchids.
Plants often have radial or rotational symmetry, as do many flowers and some groups of animals such as sea
anemones.
Rotational symmetry is also found at different scales among non-living things including the crown-shaped splash
pattern formed when a drop falls into a pods, and both the spheroidal shape and rings to a planet like Saturn.
Radial symmetry suit organisms like sea anemones whose adults do not move: food and threats may arrive from any
direction.
Types of Symmetry:
1. Threefold Symmetry
2. Fourfold Symmetry
3. Five Fold Symmetry – symmetry is found in the echinoderms, the group that includes starfish, sea urchins, and
sea lilies. The reason for the fivefold (penta-radiate symmetry of the echinoderms were bilaterally symmetrical,
as their larvae still are.
Among non-living things, snowflakes have striking six-fold symmetry: each flake’s structure forming a record of the
varying conditions during its crystallization, with nearly the same pattern of growth on each of its six arms.

6. Trees, fractals – fractals are infinitely self similar iterated mathematical constructs having fractal dimension. Infinite
iteration is not possible in nature so all ‘fractal’ patterns are only approximate.
7. Spirals- spirals are common in plants and in some animals, notably molluscs. For example, in the nautilus, a
cephalopod mollusc, each chamber of its shell is an approximate cop of the next one, scaled by a constant factor and
arranged in a logarithmic spiral. Given a modern understanding of fractals, a growth spiral can be see as a special case
of self-similarity.
8. Chaos, flow, meanders – In mathematics , a dynamical system is chaotic if it is (highly) sensitive to initial conditions
(the so called “ butterfly effect”).
Vortex street are zigzagging patterns of whirling vortices created by the unsteady separation of flow of a fluid, most
often air or water, over obstructing objects. Smooth (laminar) flow starts to break up when the size of the obstruction or
the velocity of the flow become large enough compared to the viscosity of fluid.
Meanders are sinuous bends in rivers or other channels, which form as a fluid, most often water, flows around bends.
As soon as the path is slightly curved, the sixe and curvature of each loop increases as helical flow drags material like
sand and gravel across the river to the inside of the bend. The outside of the loop is left clean and unprotected, so
erosion accelerates, further increasing the meandering i a powerful positive feedback loop.
9. Waves, dunes – waves are disturbance that carry energy as they move. Mechanical waves propagate through a
medium – air or water, making it oscillate as they pass by.
Wind waves are sea surface waves that create the characteristics chaotic pattern of any large body of water, through
their statistical behaviour can be predicted with wind wave models.
As waves in water or wind pass over san, they create patterns of ripples. When winds blow over large bodies of sand,
they create dunes, sometimes n extensive dune fields as in the Taklamakan dessert.
Dunes may form a range of patterns including crescents, very long straight lines, stars, domes, parabolas, and
longitudinal or seif (“sword”) shapes.
10. Bubbles, foam – a soap bubble forms a sphere, a surface with minimal area – the smallest possible surface area
for the volume enclosed. Two bubbles together form a more complex shape: the outer surfaces of both bubbles are
spherical; these surfaces are joined by a third spherical surface as the smaller bubble bulges slightly into the larger one.
11. Tessellations - - are patterns formed by repeating tiles all over a flat surface. There are 17 wallpaper groups of
tilings. While common in art and design, exactly repeating tilings are less easy to find in living things.
The cells in the paper nests of social wasps, and the wax cells in honeycomb built by honey bees are well-known
examples.
Among animals, bony fish, reptiles or the pangolin, or fruits like the Salak are protected by overlapping scales or
osteoderms, these form more-or-less exactly repeating units, though often the scales in fact vary continuously in size.
12. Cracks – are linear openings that form in materials to relieve stress.
When an elastic material stretches or shrinks uniformly, it eventually reaches its breaking strength and the fails suddenly
in all directions, creating cracks with 120 degree joints, so three cracks meet at a node.
Conversely, when an inelastic material fails, straight cracks form to relieve the stress. Further stress in the same
direction would then simply open the existing cracks; stress at right angles can create new cracks, at 90 degrees to the
old ones.
Thus, the pattern of cracks indicates whether the materials is elastic or not. In a tough fibrous material lik3 oak tree bark,
cracks form to relieve stress as usual, but they do not grow long as their growth is interrupted by bundles of strong
elastic fibres.
Since each species of tree has its own structure at the levels of cell and of molecules, each has its own pattern of
splitting in its bark.
13. Spots , stripes – leopards and ladybirds are spotted; angelfish and zebras are stripped.
These patterns have an evolutionary explanation: they have functions which increase the chances that the offspring of
the patterned animal will survive to reproduce.
One function of animal patterns is camouflage; for instance, a leopard that is harder to see young more prey.
Another function is signalling – for instance, a ladybird is less likely to be attacked by predatory birds that hunt by sight,
if it has bold warning colours, and is also distastefully bitter or poisonous, or mimics other distasteful insects.