One of the most
awe inspiring things that I was ever told about
Fibonacci numbers was in relation to
pine cones. Take a
random pine cone off the ground. (It works better if it's a
big hard one (I'm in
math, not
biology,
excuse me) Then look at the
bottom. There will be 2 sets of
spirals on the bottom that look somewhat like
fan blades, one going to the
left, the other set going to the
right. Count each
spiral for each direction. The 2 numbers you get will always be
sequential Fibonacci numbers. My
professor said he had be doing this for years, and had never found one larger than a 13,21 (first spiral had 13, second had 21)
pine cone. If we found a 21,34
cone he would
buy it from us, he said. Pretty
interesting, no?
See logarithmic spiral for a bit of an explanation for this.