Maths goes outdoors to track down examples of Fibonacci numbers covered in Aquila Magazine in May.
First we get to know the sequence itself and then draw the Fibonacci spiral in our maths book using the compasses.
The start of a Fibonacci spiral
A Fibonacci spiral constructed in our maths journals
Next we go searching:
5 petals!
We do lots of petal counting
The daisy can get up to 34, 55 or even 89 petals apparently
Now it gets more interesting!
We find an Aloe inflorescence with multiple flowers in the school gardens
We start counting the number of spirals on the compact raceme and it gets interesting
We find two sets of spirals – the obvious set is steep as can be easily seen in the picture and contains 13 spirals – the second set is shallow and had 8 spirals.
We then investigated pine cones and found 8 shallow spirals and 13 steep spirals too.
Student’s drawing of the spiral formations in a pine cone
The Troutbeck School 