New Place You Find The Fibonacci sequence!

 

If you've read this blog long enough or you've paid attention to articles, you know we see the Fibonacci sequence in nature, specifically flowers all the time.  Now someone has discovered that it exists in at least one other place.  Remember the Fibonacci sequence is the set of numbers beginning with 0, 1 and the next term is the sum of the previous two so it's 0,1,1,2,3,5,8, etc. The sequence was discovered by an Italian who was studying bunnies.

Believe it or not, a gentleman who is designing a solar energy project t, discovered a new Fibonacci sequence as he was designing shafts for.  Others have designed shafts or solar trees but none of them have been able to replicate the natural stability of structure and ability to absorb solar energy of real trees.  

As far as plants go, leaves gather energy from the sun so they want to have the maximum area available for absorbing it.  So the new leaves tend to begin growing just a bit further round the stem from the last one. It turns out the placement is based on the reciprocal of the golden ratio or about 61.8 percent around the stem from the last leaf.  We also know that the best way to approximate the golden ratio is by using the Fibonacci sequence.

Now, it is well known that the Fibonacci sequence is found in the leaves, and branches but this person noted that it appears in the way the tree itself grows.  Think about it.  The main trunk usually splits into two branches, one is smaller than the trunk and the other one is smaller than the trunk and the other branch so you have three different sized branches.  Each tree crotch splits in the same way.  He used Leonardo da Vinci's rule for area preservation which states that the total sum of the thickness of all the branches cannot be larger than the main trunk. 

To build it, he used standard sized aluminum and PVC stock pipes ranging from 1 to 4 inch diameters. He fit the pipes into three dimensionally printed connectors with three openings. These connectors helped the branches fit the rule of area preservation.  In addition, the openings had to be of three different sizes.  The largest is at the and the two branches are two different sizes, both smaller than the main trunk. He combined the connectors to create the final "tree".  

He decided that the tree would have one largest sized trunk -A, one of the next sized down - B, two of the third size - C, three of size -D, five for size -E, and so on.  So he built his artificial trees based on this pattern. So he used this pattern to create his "trees" for the energy. At the end, when he counted it all up, he discovered it matched the Fibonacci sequence. 

So this is a new application for this series.