![]() MEET THE AUTHOR: Peggy Doty is an energy and environmental stewardship educator who has been with University of Illinois Extension for more than 20 years. Count them one way, and if possible, the other and see just how many Fibonacci spirals you encounter. I promise after reading this you will be on a mission that is hard to stop. When you look at a plant or animal see if you can find spirals. A perfect spiral, one that keeps the same scale with each turn, is considered to follow the golden ratio. A nautilus shell is an example of the golden ratio. The golden ratio is 1.61803 and if you start at 21 in the sequence and divide it by the number immediately before it you get a number very close to the golden ratio and will continue to do so as you go forward in the sequence. The larger the numbers in the sequence the more exact it will get. The Golden Ratioįibonacci’s numbers are an approximation of what is known as the golden ratio. Going clockwise my pinecone has 8 spirals but if I go counterclockwise, I find 13 spirals. Both 8 and 13 are Fibonacci numbers and their sum 21 is the next number in the sequence. The bracts growing around the base of a pinecone are in a spiral pattern. They can be counted clockwise and counterclockwise.
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