Anybody catch this show on PBS last night?
I've always been fascinated by patterns that repeat themselves in nature, the Fibonacci Sequence, the Golden Ratio, 1.61803 and how these mathematical patterns find their way into everything, from galaxies to pine cones to sea shells. It just seems natural for surveyors to see and describe the world through mathematics and take notice of the patterns in the world around us. I've been working on designing a myself tattoo to reflect this relationship. Still working on it.
Anyway, if you missed it, it's well worth checking out.
I did watch most of it and have always pondered the relationship between math and nature. It gives me a feeling similar to when I gaze at the stars.
Working as an Engineering Assistant, I appreciated the comment regarding how Engineers approximate math to suit the needs of their project.
Sometimes I struggle with quantifying "close enough".
Mathematics is the order of the universe.
RFB 😛
My son just read a book called "The Constants of Nature" or something like that, he highly recommended it. I'll have to get the exact title and author and repost.
Probably this one
http://www.amazon.com/The-Constants-Nature-Numbers-Universe/dp/1400032253
It is interesting to consider the question that if you (or God) had a "big bang" machine, how many dials did it have to change parameters of the universe? Speed of light, electron charge, gravitational constant, and so forth.
That concept isn't the wonder of math; the wonder is that given those few settings, math can model the rest of the universe.
As an aside, there is the Carl Sagan question (Read his novel Contact or watch the Jodie Foster movie) - was the value of pi one of those settings? I tend to think not.
And as a further aside, I note that mathematicians got pi wrong. The fundamental value in mathematics is most often the ratio of the circumference to the radius (6.28...) than the ratio of the circumference to the diameter (3.14...).
Yep that's the one, I'm going to tackle it next week.
Ordered. thanks!
