Sunday 5 August 2012

The Math Behind Beauty

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/blinded-by-science/

 Marylin Monroe

The golden ratio, briefly, is the proportional relationship between two lines a and b such that (a + b) is to a as a is to b; in other words, the ratio between the whole and one of its parts is the same as the ratio between its two parts. This doesn’t sound like much in algebra form (a/b = (a + b)/a) and still less when expressed as a decimal (1:1.61814). But draw a rectangle—or build a Parthenon—with sides of a and b, and the sheer cosmic rightness of the thing leaps out at you. If you were to be stranded on a desert island with one particular rectangle, that’s the one you’d go with. Palpably, it’s the first rectangle that occurred to God when he realized he needed another four-sided, right-angled shape to complement his juvenile masterpiece, the square.


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