My wife Francesca has suggested that I’m a Bookaholic, but I think that’s a bit extreme. (I can quit anytime I want to …) I do have a lot of books and keep multiple copies of certain favorites so that I can share them with people I meet who I think would enjoy the content. Janine’s book, Biomimicry, is in this group—I ordered a bunch from her publisher and hand them out pretty freely. Another of these is The Beginner’s Guild to Constructing the Universe, by Michael S. Schneider . Great title, and an eminently readable book on the many maths in nature (yes, one of my favorite subjects!) Subtitled “A Voyage from 1 to 10,” it’s like a biography of each number through the prism of history, science, and art. I’ve read and reread my copy so many times it’s falling apart.
Now Michael—a friend and colleague—has come out with a cd called Fibonacci Garden: Mathematics in the Plant World. If you’re a Fibonacci fan, like I am, or enjoyed Vi Hart’s Fibonacci videos, this could be a very fun CD.
Here’s a bit from The Shark’s Paintbrush about Fibonacci numbers in nature:
What would life be without flowers? So many of us enjoy growing, arranging, giving, or receiving their beauty. We use them in celebrations of life, marriage, birth, and death. We decorate our churches and bury our dead with them. We don’t often stop to reflect that they are the very sex of plants, the only sex organs most societies allow people to handle, or display, in public. In common with the sexual parts of all other life forms, their design and functionality are based on the proportions of nature’s spirals. Sap flows in spiraling veins. Leaves are spaced radially around their stems in spirals—the optimum arrangement to share available sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in spirals and most often, the number of petals and seeds are Fibonacci numbers—nature’s ratio of spiral growth.
(Excerpted from The Shark’s Paintbrush, copyright Jay Harman. All rights reserved.)
Don’t forget–the paperback edition of the Shark’s Paintbrush is out in January (not, as stated on the Amazon page, in November)–but you can pre-order now! (Free shipping for students.)
