Saturday, February 23, 2008

How the Golden Ratio is rhetorical




Now how can the golden ratio be rhetorical? First of all, it is literally EVERYWHERE. From the Mona Lisa to the Great Pyramid of Giza. We can even find it in music! The french composer Debussy used the golden ratio (which is roughly 1.618) to compose accords for his music.
But the most fascinating thing about the golden ratio is, that we can also find it in nature. The seeds of a sunflower are arranged based on the golden ratio. The nautilus shell looks almost exactly like the golden spirale, which again is based on the golden ratio. The golden ratio even appears in the proportions of the human body. Try it out yourself! Meassure the length of your leg and divide it by the length of your arm. You will see, it commes very very close to 1.618 !
So the golden ratio is one of the best number mankind has found so far to describe nature. Many artists used the golden ratio for the proportions of the face they were painting, to make it as close to reality as possible. Many things that we find aesthetic or beautiful relate to the golden ratio!
By making it possible for us to describe reality (the nature) with the golden ratio, it also creats knowledge. We can understand how things are constructed, why they appear beautiful to us.
Math can be more interesting than you would think, and I will show in my research paper that it is also rhetorical.

2 comments:

Oscar said...

The golden ration!!!! I had a math teacher who was very passionate on the subject and was always telling us things about Fibonacci and the Golden Rectangle. It is a topic that there is a lot of discussion about including people who don't believe in it. There are plenty of interesting stories about its origins from people just counting pedals to numbers that were layed down by God. Great blog! I can't wait to read more.

mcalvillo said...

Wow Carmen, that is an interesting topic. It really got me thinking about the things you mentioned. I actually measured and did the math on myself. Now do you think that all pyramids play on the same rule?This is definitely something I wouldn't mind learning more about.