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Brassica oleracea
Life and Mathematics. Romanesco's shape is a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-similar pattern continues at several smaller levels, what constitutes the mathematical figure of fractal. Romanesco also show the typical sunflower type Fibonacci sequence with eight whorls in one direction and 13 in the other which are two consecutive members of Fibonacci sequence: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc where the sum of any pair define the next number in the sequence. Romanesco is a crossing between cauliflower and broccoli. Romanesco broccoli, or Roman cauliflower, is an edible flower of the species Brassica oleracea, and a variant form of cauliflower.
I bought it in the vegetables market.
Fractals are typically self-similar patterns, where self-similar means they are "the same from near as from far". Mathematical fractals may be exactly the same at every scale,they may be nearly the same at different scales. In nature we can find fractals, apart from cauliflowers, in trees, animal colouration patterns, blood vessels, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
31 Comments (1–25)
Thanks Jinga, thanks Mayra
sacred geometry at it's finest
Wow! Incredible!
I think that the best thing to do is to calibrate your local crickets counting the chirps with the thermometer at hand. I am sure it changes depending on the locality, you know, as if having different accents. Then, when resting at the sunset in your porch or garden you can always know the temperature from your crickets chirping without looking for the thermometer.
Maybe you can even compare your calibration data with distant neighbours!!
Wow Anna! All this would be too tedious. I think if somebody has time and crickets ,they should try this. I haven't seen a single cricket . I hear them all the time.
I am assuming though that the number 40 is a constant regardless of the species. It is the number of chirps that is different.
The Snowy cricket is supposed to be the most common cricket in USA.
or, if you already know the temperature, you can use chirping frequency to ID the cricket
and that is where Project Noah comes into the picture. :)
so, in order to determine temperature, first you must ID the cricket species
"The relationship between temperature and the rate of chirping is known as Dolbear's Law. According to this law, counting the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by the snowy tree cricket common in the United States and adding 40 will approximately equal the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit"
Thnx for sharing this interesting fact.
That book sounds very interesting.
Do you know also that the frequency of cricket chirping is directly related to temperature? Just by counting the number of chirps in lets say 1 minute you can find out the temperature. They chirp more often as the temperature rises, approximately 62 chirps a minute at 13°C in one common species; each species has its own rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_%28...
Found a good book on this" Engineering Animals: How Life Works"
The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer’s perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions?
Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark—or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior.
Pigeons, for instance—when understood as marvels of engineering—are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.
Thnx.
I see, this family of insects is called "gorgojos" in Spain. From what I see it looks like a crane machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_%28ma...
It is more related to engineering than to symmetry.
Fascinating!
Thanks Emma!
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/576...
this is the famous Dandoucette Weevil.
I have to confess that I have no idea of what is a weevil.
What is so special in their head and neck arrangements?
So what we have learnt from your missions is about Fractal spirals, Helixs and symmetry so far! interesting stuff!
I am also interested in knowing what principal of physics is involved in the head and neck arrangement of a weevil and a praying mantis.
thanks FrancisQuintana and ulvalactuca77
I see AnnaWhipkey. They are a bit different but as you say they overlap
The Golden Ratio!!! Love it! Beautiful!
arlanda, we have overlapping missions, mine is for spirals: http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8668.... I really like these fractal spirals!
Thanks asergio, although nobody likes mathematics in school, the rest of our life we keep some sort of fascination about it, like if was magic
Great one Arlanda. Mathematics on nature was always fascinating for me.
Thanks vipin.baliga
Wonderful show of fractals... :-)
Thanks Emma, fractals are fascinating and very widespread in vegetable world