infinite Beauty - Faculteit der Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen

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i’ve got it! one equation that explains all beauty! the finest beauty is beauty that overwhelms. one formula explaining all that overwhelms all… and i found it! in this article i will reveal to you the secret of beauty, in all of its aspects. BY: dennis KaP Power 18 math in nature infinite Beauty origin - universiteit leiden Why all this fascination for all-explaining theories? Explanatory power makes it possible to control a situation, and control is power. Even loosing control gives us a feeling of power because we are the ones to decide to give control away to the unknown. The more we know about a system, the more we can control it, right? Just take a look at the weather, which we can hardly control. It’s proportional to the explanatory power of the average weather forecast. Complementary to my own grandmothers’ recipe of iron cakes, a local delicacy in the famous city of Vlaardingen, it carefully describes us how to make it. I know by experience that it will result in delicious iron cakes. the Golden ratio Coming back to the all-explaining equation, I must admit something; it wasn’t exactly me who discovered it. It was probably Pythagoras who worked on it first and it was Euclid who first explicitly wrote about it around 300 BC: “A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the lesser.” 1 We take a line and divide it into 2 parts. If the ratio of the separate fragments is the same as the ratio of the complete line as opposed to the biggest fragment, we will see that this ratio equals 1,618034. This irrational Figure 3: Venus de Milo, a statue on display at the Louvre museum, obeys the rules of the golden ratio. Several body features lie apart from each other according to the golden ratio. (Photo: R.M.N./Arnaudet - J. Schormans; www.louvre.fr)
Figure 1: The Louvre museum houses a lot of artwork in which the golden ratio is used. The Louvre pyramid doesn’t house this ratio, unlike the pyramid of Gizeh, which does. (Photo: K. Kap). number is φ, phi, and the proportion it describes is known as ‘the golden ratio’ (box 1). iron Cakes This mysterious number caught attention of painters, biological researchers and architects and was often used in their work, both intentionally and unintentionally. Throughout history, people from different disciplines were grasped by the divine ratio, used it in their art works and looked for it everywhere in nature. Iron cakes might accompany this sequence. Iron cakes are not made from iron, but are baked on a specific iron plate. This plate has a pattern of rhombuses on it. When the ratio of the diagonals of the rhombus on an iron cake baking plate is equal to ϕ, that rhombus is called a golden rhombus. These golden rhombuses can also be found in arrangements of molecules 2 . When a golden ratio is found somewhere, one could assume that an object is self-similar. Self-similarity occurs when a subject at a smaller scale looks like itself, as it is the case for the line described in box 1, an arrangement of golden rhombuses on a baking plate or a crystalline arrangement in a molecular structure. self-similarity If there is one thing that supports the interesting theory opposed by R. L. Oldershaw, convinced of the significance of his finding, it is the golden ratio. He proposes a Self-Similar Cosmological Paradigm that proposes that nature is ordered in a transfinite, which is not infinite, but more than finite, hierarchy of discrete cosmological scales. 3-4 Box 1: The ratio of the length of fragments α:β = (α+β): α, is called the golden ratio α β This golden ratio is an irrational number, indicated by φ. This ratio is thought to be important in defining some properties of beauty. This self-similarity can be found everywhere: in fractals, molecules, and also in pyramids. Interestingly enough, the golden ratio is also found all sorts of organisms in nature. Especially people who work on phyllotaxis, the study of leaf arrangements, come into contact with this ratio very often. The number of petals for example, is often a Fibonacci number. And the Fibonacci numbers are related to the golden ratio, as explained in box 2. It is thought that both people and bees are attracted by flowers because of the Fibonacci numbers that occur in the arrangement of flower leaves and petals. Architects and painters use because they believe it is a number of “divine proportions” and believe that it describes some kind of ideal ratio. Change your face Gunes and Piccardi 5 found that the golden ratio is a good descriptor of the way in which facial features should relate to each other to nominate a face as attractive. They programmed a computer in such a way that the program could assess facial beauty with the use of rules of proportion based on the golden ratio. math in nature origin - universiteit leiden 19
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infinite Beauty - Faculteit der Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen

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