What is

life?
 A living organism?
• Old view:
Living organisms can make choices, move, react to the
environment and reproduce

• Modern view:
Life is a property of special kinds of chemicals
All living organisms have a unique chemical called DNA

Life is a special arrangement of the usual

chemical building blocks found in the physical
world
Can be Adenine(A), Thymine(T),
Guanine(G), Cytosine (C)

Deoxyribose in DNA
Ribose in RNA
 Life operates within
the physical
environment
• Life is a special arrangement of the usual
chemical building blocks

• The physical environment is regulated by

mathematical laws of physics and chemistry

• …and since life exists within this physical

world, the same laws control the organism’s
response to its genetic instructions
 Mathematics….&
patterns
• We don’t know all the answers unlike in class!

• Mathematics is a science which looks for

patterns and structure

• Language for understanding nature’s patterns

Patterns in Nature
 Studying cool patterns
in nature
• Astronomers model the patterns found in giant
spiral galaxies

• Physicists: movements of atoms

• Biologists & Doctors try to understand the random

patterns of growth, spread of disease .

• Geologists study the meandering of rivers,

tortuous coastlines, and awe-inspiring mountain
landscapes.
 Patterns in nature
• Many different
patterns arise in
nature.
• Do we always know
what they mean ?
• Or if it could have
been otherwise?
Also in plants
 Mathematics can be
fun!
• There is mathematics at every level of
life…

• …you just need to look!

• So let’s do just that!

 Busy Bunnies
• A newly born male-female pair
starts.
• Can mate once they are 1 month old.
• Female produces a pair 1 month after
mating.
• And so on…
Busy Bunnies
Busy Bunnies
 Fibonacci Series
• The rule for the sequence?
1, 1, 2, 3, ?, ?, ….

• The Answer :
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 24, …
1+ 11+= 2+
2 = 33+
3= 55+
5 = 88+= 13
13= 24
Who was Fibonacci ?
• Greatest European mathematician of
the middle ages

• Born in Pisa, Italy, the city with the

famous Leaning Tower,~ 1175 AD

• Major contributions in arithmetic,

algebra and number theory

• Decimal system
Nature and Fibonacci

White calla lily

Nature and Fibonacci

Euphorbia
Nature and Fibonacci

trillium
Nature and Fibonacci

Black eyed susan

 More Fibonacci
• Pinecones and pineapples…

• Count the number of spirals.

Spirals in a pine cone: clockwise
and anti-clockwise
And more
Spirals
Spirals
 Golden Ratio
• Compute the ratio of Fibonacci numbers:
2÷1=
3÷2=
5÷3=
8÷5=
13 ÷ 8 =
21 ÷ 13 =
 Another fun way to get
Golden ratio
• Choose any number, say x.
• Find x + 1
• Find 1/x
• Do the above two steps over and over
and over…
The Golden ratio
in nature
 In Art & Architecture..

Great Wall of China

Parthenon, Greece
The Mona Lisa
 So why do spirals occur ?
• Helps in efficient packing of seeds.

• But flowers and pinecones have to

deal with growing.
 Finding Golden ratio
• As seeds grow older they are pushed
out.
What we learnt today…

• Fibonacci numbers:
Busy Bunnies
Pineapples and pinecones: # spirals
• Spirals in nature
• The Golden ratio