WHY FIBONACCI?

The Fibonacci Sequence is a set of the most mysterious numbers known

to man. Nature revolves around this "code of life". Flowers grow petals in
numbers that match this sequence. Snails grow shells in a shape that can be
mapped out with these exact numbers. If you made a family tree of a family of
rabbits, the numbers in each branch are the Fibonacci Sequence. Fibonacci is
everywhere.
The idea of this assignment is to challenge yourself to learn something
new and teach others about it. Fibonacci is both fascinating and challenging,
and the perfect challenge for myself. I will also be including the Golden Ratio
in this project, as the two subjects are closely related.

HOW HAS MY KNOWLEDGE OF FIBONACCI

EFFECTED ME?
Rather than looking at natural things as random phenomena coming together
to create what we see around us, I now see everything as the outcome of a
series of numbers and ratios. Trees don't grow in random shapes and
directions. They all grow following a specific guideline. Otherwise people
would not be able to distinguish one type from another. Willow trees for
example, all look similar because they follow a guideline. Without a guideline,
what's to stop a willow tree from taking the shape of an oak tree? Fibonacci's
sequence is one of the most prominent guidelines in nature, and many plants,
animals, and other formations follow this sequence. In other words, nature has
a method behind all of its madness, and after studying Fibonacci's sequence,
I'm starting to see this "method" all around me.
PHI - THE GOLDEN NUMBER
The number behind the "Golden Ratio" is called "phi". This number is roughly
1.618 (the decimal places extend infinitely, much like pi). If you take two
consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence and divide the larger by the
smaller, you will get a number very close to 1.618. The larger the numbers
used are, the closer to phi your answer will be. The Golden Ratio is any two
consecutive Fibonacci numbers, or any two numbers whose ratio is equal to
phi when reduced. This ratio is widely used in architecture. If parallel walls of
a rectangular building are 21 feet long, and the adjacent wall (and its parallel,
opposite wall) are 34 feet long, this building is built with the Golden Ratio.
ARRANGEMENT OF FLOWER PETALS
The arrangement of petals on a flower follows a very specific pattern. If the
petals all grew in 30°, 45°, 60°, 95° or even 180° angles from each other, they
would eventually run out of room for more petals to grow where they will
still receive sunlight. With 180°, (petals directly opposite each other) the third
petal up the stalk will block out the first one. In fact, with any whole number
degree determining where the petals grow, they will always (eventually) start
blocking each other out. Therefore, they must follow an irrational number; the
MOST irrational number: phi. The ratio of one over phi gives you 137.5°. This
is the magical number that works, without petals ever completely overlapping
each other and blocking out sunlight.
GOLDEN RATIO IN THE HUMAN BODY
The human body's design follows the golden ratio in
almost innumerable ways. The human face alone contains over 20 instances
of the Golden Ratio. In fact, the width and height of the human face is the
golden ratio. If you were to draw a golden rectangle around the human face
and trace a Fibonacci spiral starting at the top left corner of the rectangle, the
curve of the spiral would match the curve of the side of the face. The positions
of the features on the face are determined by the ratio. The distance from the
top of the head to the eyes can be represented as 1 and the distance from the
eyes to the bottom of the face would equal 1.618. The same is also true for
the distance from the eyes to the mouth to the bottom of the face. The size of
the upper lip versus the size of the lower lip is also a golden ratio (the bottom
lip being larger). There is also the distance from your chin to your bottom lip,
and the bottom of your bottom lip to the top of your upper lip. Even the
distance from the tops of your eyebrows and the size of your eyes follows the
golden ratio.
FIBONACCI IN MUSIC
Music follows Fibonacci in the way notes are arranged on on a piano, the way
tones clash to make chords, and the way that scales are formed. A piano is
arrange by octaves each consisting of 13 notes. 8 of these notes are white
(natural notes) and 5 of them are black (accidental notes). 8 of these 13 notes
in the octave can be used to create a major scale. The scale starts on the
note it's named after and moves up in a pattern of whole (W) and half
(H) steps (The pattern is represented as W-W-H-W-W-W-H). This means that
each scale will consist of different notes, depending on where the scale starts.
For any given scale, the 3rd and 5th create the basic foundations for the
chords in that key signature.
"LATERALUS" BY TOOL AND ITS REFERENCE TO THE FIBONACCI
SEQUENCE
In 2001, American progressive rock band, Tool, released a song entitled
"Lateralus". The song is in reference to the Fibonacci spiral with lyrics like,
"Ride the spiral to the end, that takes us to where no man's been." However,
there is a pattern in the song that references the Fibonacci Sequence as well.
The lyrics in the verses are arranged so that the number of consecutive
syllables reads as the Fibonacci Sequence. For example, the first verse is,
"Black - Then - White are - All I see - In my infancy - Red and yellow then
came to be - Reaching out to me - Helps me see". ( "-" means there is a
pause between the syllables) Represented by the number of syllables, this
pattern reads as "1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 8 - 5 - 3"
WHAT'S WRONG WITH SPONGEBOB'S PINEAPPLE?
There are already several minor details that have been overlooked in the
show "Spongebob Squarepants." First of all, his pants aren't even squares;
they're rectangles. This mistake if forgivable, as "Rectanglepants" isn't quite
as appealing of a name as "Squarepants". Then there's the fact that his snail's
shell isn't even a logarithmic spiral. Snails don't grow spirals the shape of
Gary's shell. These flaws aside, there is one error that is proven by Fibonacci
to be impossible in real life. This "pineapple under the sea" couldn't even be
considered a pineapple in the real world. The spirals in a pineapple add up to
be one Fibonacci number of spirals going left (such as 8 or 13 or occasionally
21) and the number of spirals going right is the next Fibonacci number before
or after the number of spirals going left. It is, however, impossible to count all
of the spirals in Spongebob's pineapple, as it never gives you a full 360
degree view of the pineapple. So how can we prove that it has the wrong
number of spirals? It's tricky, however it has been proven. When you trace the
spirals in a real pineapple (left in one color and right in a different color) it
creates diamond-shaped sections in between the lines. If you trace the
centers of these diamonds, you get a new set of spirals. If the pineapple has
the correct number of spirals, these new lines will all be slanted and parallel. If
you use this trick on a picture of Spongebob's pineapple, the middle line is not
slanted, but perpendicular to the ground. This proves that there are the same
number of spirals going left as there are spirals going right. This is impossible.
Spongebob's pineapple is a fraud.