Absintheory

One of the great things about mathematics is the way the everyday can be explained with absolute clarity and precision. That, and the fact that you will sound tres intelligent if you prattle on about this stuff with any regularity.

from WIKI, regarding the golden mean:

‘ The approach of a hawk to its prey. Their sharpest view is at an angle to their direction of flight; this angle is the same as the spiral’s pitch.

The approach of an insect to a light source. They are used to having the light source at a constant angle to their flight path. Usually the sun (or moon for nocturnal species) is the only light source and flying that way will result in a practically straight line.

The arms of spiral galaxies. Our own galaxy, the milky way, is believed to have four major spiral arms, each of which is roughly a logarithmic spiral with pitch of about 12 degrees, an unusually small pitch angle for a galaxy such as the Milky Way. In general, arms in spiral galaxies have pitch angles ranging from about 10 to 40 degrees.

The arms of tropical cyclones, such as hurricanes.

Many biological structures including the shells of molluscs. In these cases, the reason is the following: Start with any irregularly shaped two-dimensional figure F₀. Expand F₀ by a certain factor to get F₁, and place F₁ next to F₀, so that two sides touch. Now expand F₁ by the same factor to get F₂, and place it next to F₁ as before. Repeating this will produce an approximate logarithmic spiral whose pitch is determined by the expansion factor and the angle with which the figures were placed next to each other.’

see what I mean? Impressive, innit?

But wait, there’s more….try quoting Le Courbousier:

 ”rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages and the learned.”

Drop in a bit of Euclid, biometrics, Vitruvian Man….Bob’s your brother’s sister’s lover. Instant braniac.