Fruits, Flowers, and Fibonaccis !

I spend a lot of time analyzing and looking deeper into the true mathematics of the world. Every day we see hundreds of millions of examples of amazing and beautiful mathematics. The trees swaying from the wind, the sounds we hear are waves with sinusoidal forms, the way the earth rotates and the clouds move across the sky, the colors you see every day, everything you see in the world is based upon mathematics.

          

      Today’s focus will be on the more obvious flowers, fruits, and of course Fibonaccis of the world. Firstly, for anyone who does not know what a fruit or a flower is, I cannot help you, however I will direct you to these two sites, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers.   Now for those people who read my blog that know what fruits and flowers are you may be asking yourself “What’s a fib….. fibon….? Fibonacci?? Fear not readers all will be revealed soon, and for those of my readers who obviously know everything and don’t think I can provide any new information to them about the Fibonacci sequence I hope I can prove you wrong, if not then my blog succeeded after all =). Anyways, I’m off topic, The Fibonacci sequence was a sequence which has no set discoverer, it was however introduced to the Western European nations by Leonardo of Pisa a.k.a Fibonacci, which obviously is where the name came from. Basically the sequence starts with 0 and 1, and the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers, simple right? Well start writing them out and see how high you get without using a calculator or that column addition crap we learned in 3^rd grade.  You can probably get to the 15^th or 16^th term without having to use too much brain power, don’t feel discouraged if you cannot, trust me knowing the 30^th Fibonacci number does not help you get girls, I have tried! This sequence continues on for infinitum until….. oh wait we never get to infinity, well then I guess it goes on forever, pretty cool right?? :D

 What if instead of 0 and 1, we started the Fibonacci sequence with 2 and 1???? And each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two??? Well that isn’t the Fibonacci sequence, sorry folks that’s called the Lucas sequence. This sequence was discovered by François Édouard Anatole Lucas while he was studying the patterns and significance of the Fibonacci sequence (Best job ever right :D). I’m not going to tell you to try and figure out this sequence, don’t worry, I’ve tried, still no girls. Lucky for us we don’t need girls we have Mathematics and we have NATURE!!!! Now readers, I want you to go outside and find a pinecone!!!! Just an arbitrary pinecone, hopefully one that has yet to open up fully and isn’t damaged. Now for those of you who did not get a pinecone, you are no fun. For those of you who did get a pinecone, awesome! You are now the proud owner of your very own Fibonacci thingy. Here’s where it gets interesting, count the spirals stemming from the top of the pinecone and straying diagonally. Do try not to countr the same part of the pinecone twice, it isn’t rocket science. Once you’ve counted them, count the spirals going the other way. Now take a minute to look at those numbers you got, assuming you counted correctly I can guarantee that you got a 7,5,8,11,or 13 as a number. No it’s not magic, silly readers it’s just mathematics. Pinecones are guaranteed to have a number of spirals that corresponds to a Fibonacci or a Lucas number, always. Go get three more pinecones, do the same thing, you might just find something very mathgical J.  Now go outside and find a pineapple!! For those of you who went outside looking for a pineapple, I commend you efforts but I doubt you will find one. If you didn’t go look for a pineapple, you are smart, but still no fun. If you did find a pineapple then you are very lucky. Anyone else just go look at one. Do the same thing you did with the pinecones except this time count the spirals turning upwards as well. I bet you get one of the Fibonacci or Lucas numbers. Anyone who didn’t, count it again. Those are just two of the many, many “Fibonacci thingys” in the world I’ll let you guys go find the rest. Let’s move on, who ever made up that myth about four leaf clovers being lucky? I never understood how a clover could be lucky till someone pointed it out to me. Maybe the clover is lucky to be 4 leafed? Mind explosion! What are the two most common clovers to find? I’d say 3, and 5 and 4 is the rarest? Well maybe, just maybe, it’s because 3 and 5 are Fibonacci numbers, and 4 is a Lucas number :D, because as we all know Lucas numbers are much more rare in nature than Fibonacci numbers. I wonder how many things in this world have associations with the Fibonacci and Lucas numbers? I think I read somewhere about dandelions maybe I wonder if they have spirals and something about nautiluses? Hmm well I guess I’ll just have to look that up another time ;) Maybe now when you guys see a tree or a clover or a pinecone, you won’t just see the object. Maybe you’ll see the numbers and maybe you’ll figure out why this “small world” is much larger than we think it is. Happy Mathing!

Your weekly “Coincidence”: I’m going to do this section every week, I will include a story from my week in which a “coincidence” occurred that seemed especially, mathy to me, enjoy!

This week I had to finish writing an English research paper, (yeah I know, eww English ;)   ) but being math people we must respect all of the subjects no matter how unmathy they are. For this research paper I had to research fireproofing for firefighters. So I went to the Richmond Times Dispatch archives, and I don’t remember exactly what I searched for, but I do remember that when the search came back for something about firefighting fireproofing or something like that, it returned 911 articles. Small World huh?