The absolute joy that I experienced whilst willfully walking through the warming wooden doors of the Wilson’s Lecture Theatre could not have been more refreshing on a Spring Saturday morning. After what seemed like a very long two week break from the Masterclasses, I was as bright as a daffodil and revving to learn!
This week our lecture was based upon the all famous Fibonacci sequence and how this extraordinary sequence is found in the immediate environment surrounding us. The lecture began with the observation of the sequence and a series of questions followed on after this for example, ‘what is the next number’ and so on...
Our lecturer called ‘Ian Brown’ or in my case, ‘Mr. Brown’ was joining us from the British American College, situated in Regents Park, London. He then went on to present us with a picture on the projector of several flowers.
However many of us were wondering how the beauty of these flowers could possibly relate to such a mathematically logical sequence such as t
he Fibonacci sequence?
But our pondering questions were very much answered in a matter of a few moments… “As you may have already realized, the number of petals on a flower are usually amounted to five or eight, however you very rarely find a flower with any more or less. And if you look at the Fibonacci sequence you will discover, the amount of petals on a flower is very similar to this sequence...3, 5, 8, 13...”
And our question was answered.
Mr. Brown then showed us the first thirty numbers of this sequence, before plotting a few of them on a graph. And not to any surprise the graph showed a rapid increase.
Mr. Brown then made an amazing comparison to the production of life; explaining that just as the graph was displaying a slow start but a fast increase, so did mankind in the first thousand years.
We were then brought back to the images of the flowers; although this time the pictures were enlarged so that we could only see the centre core of the flower. The spiral in the centre of the flower is what we were asked to concentrate on and once again we were shown how this incorporated the idea of the Fibonacci sequence.
If a sunflower’s seed head was looked at through a microscopic lens and then the spirals moving from left to right were counted you would find:
Spirals moving to the right amount to 34 and
Spirals moving to the left amount to 55.
The Golden Ratio was also mentioned, but only briefly, before moving on...
We were set a challenge, in which we had to prove that 64=65.
At first it seems impossible as there is a clear difference of one and an imbalance on both sides of the equal’s sign... You’d be very surprised to learn that it was proven to be true! (You’re going to have to stop me in the corridors if you need to be shown just how this is actually possible).
All I can say is that every session has taught me something fascinating about the world that we live in and this is what makes me want to learn more…Learning, discovering and exploring is the key to our survival and life is pretty much empty and dull if we do not attempt to fill ourselves with knowledge that will enable us to be better individuals.