Thursday, March 25, 2010

If you watch one video today...

...watch this: Nature by Numbers



via Grrlscientist. For details on the science behind the video, see here.

15 comments:

  1. Hi Bee,

    fascinating! Life is made by numbers.

    Best Kay

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  2. Thank you, Bee, that was wonderful, and a great reminder that Mathematics needn't be boring nor suck, but may in fact (as I believe) be the most intriguing subject of all.

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  3. Long live Fibonacci!
    Nur schade, dass ich "You tube" nicht speichern kann, weil die Seite in der Schule gesperrt ist.
    Best Mum

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  4. Gibts auch auf Vimeo, guck mal hier

    http://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html/nbyn_htm/movie_index.htm

    Die Fibonacci sequence finded sich angeblich auch im Kakteenwachstum, schau mal genau hin :-)

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  5. To translate Bee for those who don't read or speak German:

    Gibts also on Vimeo, look here

    The Fibonacci sequence finded allegedly also in cacti grow, look out exactly :-)

    C'mon, Bee. You're such a tease. ;=)

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  6. But Steven, my mother tongue is German :-)

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  7. I understand that your Mother tongue is German, Bee. Twas Gauss', Hertz's, Röntgen's, Einstein's, Heisenberg, Barbour's, Born's, and Schrodinger's and many other German Scientists'stongue as well.

    Good tongue. :-) For example:

    The primary heritage of America is German, with English a close second. Irish a distinct but distant third (Saints be praised! ... we have a sense of humor!). Italian a distinct but distant 4th (here in NJ Irish and Italian are tied for 1st). All others heritages are very distant in comparison.

    But, we have them all here! :-) All heritages and ethnic groups. There's not a country on Earth that hasn't cousins in America, and no other country can make that claim.

    We in America are THE great experiment!

    But German is first. :-)

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  8. Hi Bee,

    Mathematics and Biology. Nice choice, one of my favorite topics!

    Indeed, the mathematical organization of biological system is quite intriguing. During my education at the University of Montpellier, I have always been fascinated by the fact nature chooses mathematical rules as a strategy to survive.

    I read once (but I cannot remember where it was) that there exists an insect species which chooses to go out of ground and fetch food outside according to prime numbers series, so as to impede the possibility for predators to recall the frequency of their outings.

    Flowers and plants are particularly rigorous regarding mathematics. Flowers with a rigourous structure (+nice colors) are more attractive for bees (you?), probably because it is the sign the plant is not ill and has something good to offer.

    All in all, it seems like the best fit to survive has to know mathematics, which then appears to somehow be embedded in genomes...

    Plants knew Mathematics long before Humanity did... Crazy isn't it?

    From this, physicists could learn that natural geometrical objects and mathematical principles can emergence from natural selection, i.e., from randomness and selection/mutation cycles... I guess Lee Smolin's theory of evolution applied to the universe is a first step in that direction. But a question remains unanswered : Is an electron the resulting species of selection/mutation cycles? If so, does an electron have a genome?

    Interesting...

    Regards,

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  9. A nice demo of the emergent space-time defined by Aether particle packing geometry.

    http://www.etereaestudios.com/worksweb/nbyn/about/pipas_02.gif

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  10. Sorry, better look at

    http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm

    where you will see that most of the Fibonacci claims are debunked.

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  11. Hi Bee,

    Thanks, especially as I consider myself a Phi guy, as if anyone asks me how things are going, I will most often simply reply 60, 40. I suppose instead I should answer more correctly, the square root of five, plus or minus one with all divided by two, yet people already consider my response strange enough. I then have oft times been brought to wonder, how to give someone a high Phi as opposed to a high five; any suggestions:-)

    Best,

    Phi Lip

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  12. Rastus: Sorry, but I didn't find the site you linked to too enlightening. Sure, there's many spirals. Sure, what we see in Nature is rarely exactly anything. Sure, the patterns in sunflower seeds (and the above mentioned cacti) are a result of the growth process. I actually heard a talk about that once. Let it grow from the middle out, what pattern do you get? Does it tell you something about how fast the plant has been growing? I don't know why this would make Nature less beautiful? Best,

    B.

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  13. Hey Bee, thanks for sharing this video - it's so beautiful! I wish it would include foraminifera as well, though :)

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  14. http://sites.google.com/site/asupernaturalaffection/home

    I have a poem about mathematics in my book that matches the content of this video, but I am always amazed at how the many formulas are interwined in the beauty of nature.

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