Class 2/13/12 - Readings 4.1-4.3

Salut mes amants des maths!

c'est lundi! voila autre blog, mes amis! (It's Monday and I have another blog for you!)


Today we had a presentation on the Fibonacci & the Fibonacci sequence given by some of mes meilleures amies: Jackie, Kimberly and Michelle!

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (c. 1170 – c. 1250) also known as Leonardo Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages and best known to the modern world for spreading knowledge of the Hidu-Arabic numeral system across Europe through his Book of Calculations, the Liber Abaci. More importantly, he also spread knowledge of the number sequence named after him which was known as the Fibonacci numbers which he did not himself discover but used in the aforementioned book.

An Indian writer, Pigala, of 4th century B.C. discovered and had a general idea of the Fibonacci sequence. In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. This sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ...                                                                                                                                                                                   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A really cool fact about the Fibonacci numbers is that it can actually be seen in nature! Take Romanesque Broccoli/Cauliflower for example which pretty much looks and tastes like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. Each floret is peaked and is an identical but smaller version of the whole thing and this makes the spirals easy to see. If you count the number of spirals in each direction as shown in the picture, you can clearly see the pattern that gives the Fibonacci numbers! 

After the presentation, lecture covered some of the topics from chapter 4 some of which include more information about Archimedes and his mathematical contributions related to the concept of Center of Gravity such as  Proposition 6 and properties of parabaloids. 

Proposition 6: Two magnitudes (commensurable) balance at distances inversely proportional to the magnitudes.  This proposition is illustrated here. 

Well that's all for now, mes amis. Until next time. 

Bisous! 

:) 

-MB