Wednesday, April 20, 2005

more spirals...

and just when I wanted a conch shell to draw, a mysterious basket of rare seashells appeared in our craftroom...





The purest , most universal form of motion is the spiral: the counterclockwise spiral, the levogyre, is the one found most often in nature. We discover it in the growth of trees and in other members of the vegetable kingdom, in the majestic sweep of the great spiral galaxies, in the long bones of animals, and in seashells. There are also many instances of double spirals--the two intersecting curves in the seed heads of ripe sunflowers, in the centers of daisies., the seed cones of fir trees. Like curves, spirals are not all the same. The equiangular or logarithmic spiral of the elegant chambered nautilus is one type, seen also in ram's horns. It is interesting to note that the double spiral of the sunflower corresponds to the ratio of the Fibonacci Series. If you count the number of seeds in a clockwise spiral and in an intersecting counterclockwise spiral, the two figures will be that of a sequence in Fibonacci's magic chain.

1 comment:

Tait McKenzie said...

and out and out to the spinning of the stars! and in to the seashell's atomic structure. there is no cause, spirals are symptomatic of life.