Friday, May 4, 2012

Things that are Golden are In-Phi-nite Fun


HELLO mathmatites, mathematicalulars, people who originate from the great land of Mathia. Back again, and this week we focus on flowers and fibonacci’s!! Oh….. wait, that was last week…. Uhhhhh okay so we can talk about Mathematics….. no that was two weeks ago. How about gold? Yeah gold sounds like a good math concept!! Seems a tad more “sciency” but I think we can make it work right? Its math, anything can happen with math!! But who wants to be restricted to something so menial as gold? Let’s step it up and add in some letters!! You know those things in math that nobody likes because they aren’t “numbers” and they “make things harder”. But who wants to stop at normal American letters!! Let’s add in some Greek letters, like Phi.  So gold and Phi, anyone see where I’m going with this? No? Hmm maybe I have to be more explicit. There once was a man from Tuckahoe, who dreamed of a golden ratio, with a rectangle side b and longer side a, the ratio of a + b / a must be equal to the ratio a/b for it to follow the golden rule. Oh yeah, rhyming skills…. Give me a break I’m a mathematician not a poet, and I do know it ;D.
               
  So obviously our talk for today is going to be about the Golden Ration and Phi. Phi is the Greek letter that in this instance represents the fraction (1 + sqrt(5))/2. If you are like me and always have a calculator with you, you probably didn’t have to read this sentence to see what is calculates to be is approximately 1.618033988749895… and so on and so on. Now you’re probably sitting at home reading this for one of three reasons. One you find it interesting, two you enjoy laughing at my attempts to sound smart by using big words like “addition” and “5” , or three you don’t care but the math intrigues you to the point you have to read this blog all the way through. This isn’t trigonometry so enough of these tangents let’s talk about what the golden ration means in the world. The golden ratio has been said to have interesting aesthetically pleasing properties. It has been said that objects that incorporate the golden ratio are much more visually appealing than those without. After some research I foud out that a few things the incorporate the golden ratio in their design are, The Mona Lisa, The Parthenon, and credit cards. That’s right people get out your rulers with stickers of cartoon characters on it it’s time to measure our credit cards. So take your ruler and measure the longer side of your credit card and then divide that number by the measurement of the shorter side. I bet you’ll get something pretty close to 1.618? Be aware units do not matter here because it is a ratio. But that’s amazing, isn’t it? So after all of those mathematical calculations my brain hurts so let’s go to something more colorful. If you take the color spectrum you know ROY. G. BIV. Anyone remember that old thing? Well these colors are measured in frequencies. It has been said that is you take two colors and then one color that is Phi distance on the frequency scale from one of the others that you chose it will complement those colors better than any other color would. I guess art is math then? Come to think of it, it seems like everything has some math in it right? I bet if you looked hard enough you could see the math in everyday life. I have faith. But back to our subject! Right, gold or golden ratio I guess, why am I telling you this? Well if you think about it maybe mathematicians make the best artists, what if we made a drawing the uses only rectangles and objects that are in the golden ratio? Probably be pretty darn beautiful? I guess math can be beautiful, and if you don’t think it can well I guess haters going to hate as the kids these days say?

Well I think I bored you guys enough I will leave you with two stories today. So the other night I had some recorded tv shows to watch, about 5 or 6 ranging from 30 minutes, to an hour long with commercials (which we all know I skip through anyways) I started at about 8:43 pm and when the last show ended and I was about to turn the TV off the clock turned to 12:00 exactly. The second story is today I filled up my car and I filled exactly 13.333 gallons, I don’t know why that one has any math relation but I’m sure my faithful readers can imagine how awesome I felt filling up for that. Next week I think we are going to get a bit leafy ;D  May the math and the fourth be with you all.

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