Section 1.

1: Patterns and Numbers in Nature

and the World

• Mathematics & Nature.pptx

• ..\..\Downloads\Nature by Numbers.mp4
 TYPES OF PATTERNS IN NATURE

• ARE VISIBLE REGULARITIES OF FORM

FOUND IN THE NATURAL WORLD
• THESE PATTERNS RECUR IN DIFFERENT
CONTEXTS AND CAN SOMETIMES BE
MODELLED MATHEMATICALLY
1) SYMMETRY - Is pervasive in living things

Animals mainly have bilateral or mirror symmetry

Leaves of plants and some flowers such as Orchids
Plants often have radial or rotational symmetry
Examples:
Sea Anemones
Echinoderms
Starfish
Sea urchins
Sea lilies
 Starfish

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

 2) TREES, FRACTALS

• Are infinitely self-seminar, iterated mathematical constructs have fractal dimension

(approximate)
Examples:
• Ferns
• Corals
• River networks
• Animal coloration
• Snow flakes, etc.
 Ferns

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 snowflakes

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under

CC BY-NC-ND

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

 3) SPIRALS
Such arrangements in mollusks, sunflower seed heads
or structure of a pineapple fruit are called spirals.
Some of these spirals can be generated mathematically
from Fibonacci ratios (sequence)
Examples:
• When leaves alternate up a stem, one rotation of the spiral touches two
leaves, so the pattern or ratio is a Fibonacci ratio
• Hazel – ratio is 1/3
• Apricot – ratio is 2/5
• Pear – ratio is 3/8
• Almond – ratio is 5/13
Sunflower and daisy, the florets are arranged in
Fermat’s spiral with Fibonacci numbering
Fibonacci ratios approximate the golden angle,
137.5080, which governs the curvature of
Fermat’s spiral
the sunflower
the flower petals
 4) CHAOS, FLOW, MEANDERS

• In mathematics, a dynamical system is chaotic if it is

(highly) sensitive to initial conditions (the so called
“butterfly effect”) which requires the mathematical
properties of topological mixing and dense periodic
orbits.
Examples
• Clouds formation
• Shell of mollusk
• Brain coral
 Clouds formation

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

the snail’s shell
 5) WAVES, DUNES

• Are disturbances that carry energy as they move

Example
• Breaking wave in a ship’s wake
• Sand dunes in a desert
• Wind ripples with dislocations
 Breaking wave

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 6) BUBBLES, FOAM

• Soap bubble – form a sphere. Two bubbles together form a

more complex shape, the other surfaces are spherical; these
surfaces are joined by a third spherical surface as the smaller
bubble bulges slightly into the lighter one
• Foam – a mass of bubbles
 Soap bubbles

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 7) TESSELLATIONS

Patterns formed by repeating tiles all over a flat surface

Common in art and design
Example
• Honeycomb
• Crystals
• Snake fruits
• Tessellated pavement of a rare rock formation
honeycomb
 8) CRACKS
• Linear openings that form in materials to relieve stress
• The pattern of cracks indicates whether the material is elastic
or not

Example
• Drying inelastic mud
• Old pottery surface
• Palm trunk
 Drying inelastic mud

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 9) SPOTS, STRIPES

• These patterns have an evolutionary explanation:

camouflage, signaling, survival, etc.
Example
• Leopard
• Zebras
• Butterfly
• Royal angelfish
• Ladybirds
• Cuttlefish
 tiger’s stripes

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

 hyena’s spots

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 10) PATTERN FORMATION

• These patterns formed out of reaction-diffusion system,

vegetated landscape, fissured pattern, and fir waves

Example
• Human brain
• Putter fish
• Fairy circles
• Patterned ground
• Guineafowl
 Human brain

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

 the world’s population

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A Study of Patterns
 Pattern

• An arrangement which helps observers anticipate what they might see

or what happens next.
• It shows what may have come before
• It organizes information so that it becomes more useful

Human mind is programmed to make sense of data or to bring order

where there is disorder
• Seeks to discover relationships and connections between seemingly
unrelated bits of information.
Example 1: Logic Patterns
Answer: d
 • Ex. 1
Example 2: Number Patterns •
•
9,3
32, 6
• Ex. 2
• 4, 16, 40

• Ex.1
Observe the pattern and fill in the blanks.
• 18, 3, 15, 3, 12, 3, ( ), ( ).
• 1, 2, 2, 4, 3, 8, 4, 16, 5, ( ), ( ).
• Ex.2
Observe the following triples:
• (1, 4, 10), (2, 8, 20), (3, 12, 30), … ,
Example 3: Geometric Patterns
 Example 4: Word Patterns

• Knife : knives
• Life: lives
• Wife: Wives
 Exercises:

• Answer: C
 Exercises:

Answer: 3: c; 4:c
Exercises:

Answer: a
Exercises:

Answer: C
 Exercises:

• Answer: d
Exercise:

Answer: d
Number Patterns:
Systemizing Patterns
through Mathematics
Section 2
The Fibonacci Sequence & The Golden Ratio
 Sequence
• An ordered list of numbers, called terms that may have
repeated values. The arrangement of these terms is set by
a definite rule.
• Example 1: Analyze the given sequence for its rule and
identify the next three terms.
• A. 1, 10, 100, 1000
• B. 2, 5, 9, 14, 20
The Fibonacci Sequence
 The Fibonacci Sequence

•
 Find a Fibonacci Number

•Use the definition of Fibonacci numbers to find the seventh and

eighth Fibonacci numbers.

Solution: The first six Fibonacci numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. The

seventh Fibonacci number is the sum of the two previous Fibonacci
numbers.

•Thus, F7 = F6 + F5
=8+5

= 13
Example 3 – Solution cont’d

•The eighth Fibonacci number is

F8 = F7 + F6
= 13 + 8
= 21
 The Fibonacci Sequence can be
written as a "Rule" .
• First, the terms are numbered from 0 onwards like this:
n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ...
Fib(n) = 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 ...

So term number 6 is called Fib(6) (which equals

8).
Find Fib(15)?

𝐹𝑖𝑏 ( 15 ) =𝐹𝑖𝑏 ( 13 ) + 𝐹𝑖𝑏 ( 14 )=233+277=610

 The Golden Ratio
…in mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in
golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of
their sum to the larger of the two quantities.
• The Golden ratio is a special number found by dividing a line into two parts
so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole
length divided by the longer part. It is often symbolized using phi, after the
21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In an equation form, it looks like this:
• = 1.6180339887498948420 …

Where: a>b>0
 The Golden Ratio
When we take any two successive (one after the other) Fibonacci
Numbers, their ratio is very close to the  Golden Ratio"φ" which
is approximately 1.618034...
In fact, the bigger the pair of Fibonacci Numbers,
the closer the approximation. Let us try a few:
A B   B/A

2 3   1.5

3 5   1.666666666..

5 8   1.6

8 13   1.625

It takes longer to get good values, but it shows that not just the Fibonacci
Sequence can do this!
 n= 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ...
Fib(n) = 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 ...

Find the ratio of Fib(13) and Fib(14)?

=
• Golden ratio is often symbolized by the Greek
letter phi ( φ ). It is the number
=1.6180339887498948420 …
• And the irrational number
 History
• Fibonacci was not the first to know about the sequence, it was
known in India hundreds of years before!
• His real name was Leonardo Pisano Bogollo, and he lived between
1170 and 1250 in Italy.
• "Fibonacci" was his nickname, which roughly means "Son of
Bonacci".
• As well as being famous for the Fibonacci Sequence, he helped
spread Hindu-Arabic Numerals (like our present numbers
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) through Europe in place of Roman Numerals (I,
II, III, IV, V, etc).
• That has saved us all a lot of trouble!
Fibonacci Day is November 23rd, as it has the digits "1, 1, 2, 3" which
is part of the sequence. So next Nov 23 let everyone know!
Example: The Parthenon
Seurat’s Bathers The Mona Lisa
The Vitruvian Man
Leonardo da Vinci has
incorporated geometry in
many of his paintings, with
the golden ratio being one
of his many mathematical
tools. Experts agree that he
probably thought the golden
ratio made his paintings
more attractive.
 Activity:

• The Golden Ratio and the Human Body

• Measure the following:
• Distance from the ground to your navel.
• Distance from your navel to the top of your head
• Distance from the ground to your knees
• Length of your hand
• Distance from your wrist to your elbow
• Distances A, B and C as indicated in the figure
• Now, calculate the following ratios and write the results in the table:

• 1.

• 2.

• 3.

Students’ Ratio 1 Ratio 2 Ratio 3 Ratio 4 Ratio 5

• 4. Name
Juan
Jane
• 5.

Can you see anything special about the ratios?

 Human anatomy
"φ" • Is exhibited in both human physique and facial dimensions:
a. The width of the face and the length of the face
b. The width of the nose and the length of the mouth
c. The little finger and the middle finger
d. The human lung is divided into sections based on the golden ratio
e. The eardrum consist of chambers that are located at approximately golden
ratio to optimize sound regulation and vibrations
f. The ratio of systolic and diastolic pressure is ideally 1.6, a close approx. of the
golden ratio
g. The helix spirals of the DNA molecule is configured at 34 angstroms and 21
angstroms, two consecutive Fibonacci’s number whose ratio is close to "φ“.
The width of the face and the length of the
face
The width of the nose and the length of the
mouth
The little finger and the middle finger
The human lung is divided into sections based
on the golden ratio
The eardrum consist of chambers that are located at
approximately golden ratio to optimize sound
regulation and vibrations
The helix spirals of the DNA molecule