One way that Math and Science are linked

Everytime math comes into my science class, the students always groan. “Why do we have to do math? We already had math class?” But math and science are linked. In fact, the math has to be there. And it can be really interesting how this happens. A number of years ago, one of my favorite youtubers did a trilogy of videos on this.

The first is on Fibonacci numbers, which seem to pop up all over the place. This then leads to one of my favorite irrational numbers: Phi (Φ). Everyone knows about Pi, but phi is pretty awesome too. Well, actually the golden ratio, which is also used all over the place, and mathematicians use phi as shorthand, kind of like they use pi for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter.

It turns out that when plants want to grow leaves, but not have the upper leaves be right above the lower leaves, they frequently put the leaves phi degrees away from the previous leaf. How do they do that? It’s not like they have protractors know about geometry or anything. It turns out that it’s really simple, as vihart gets to. It’s just growing where there’s more protein that tells the plant where to grow new leaves. This automatically ends up with the leaves being phi degrees apart. It’s really cool!

Anyway, here are the videos: