nature and nurture

several things contributed to my selecting  this image today:

• my husband and son have been following tennis player carlos alcaraz for a couple years now. so today’s men’s final of the us open is a must-watch big deal in our household
• we have not had a t.v. in our house for 18 years
• in order to watch ‘big screen’ events, the family uses my imac computer
• so, i was without a computer to edit and post a photo for most of the day
• this photos was on my iphone, shot against a white sky, which makes if nearly STILL worthy

but there is also this,

• this photo does a good job of showing the pattern of the seeds in the center of the flower
• the mathematics of sunflowers are truly astounding
• the spirals you see in the center are generated from a fibonacci  sequence –1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144…
• in order to optimize seed filling, there are two series of curves winding in opposite directions, starting at the center and stretching out to the petals,
• each seed sitting at a certain angle from the neighboring seeds to create the spiral
• when the angle is exactly the golden mean, and only this one, two families of spirals (one in each direction) are then visible

how fantastic is that? fibonacci, golden ratio, double spirals, optimized seed filling–all visible in one iphone photo.

nature blows my mind!

sunflower in september