Beauty of Math: Math and Plants

Struggle to get your students excited about math? Why not use the beauty of classical art, nature, and visualization to teach math! We have three lovely workshops, this first on the golden ratio in sunflowers and plants, a second on the golden spiral in classical art and architecture, and a third on graphing your own art based on simple shapes/lines.

In this first workshop, we teach the golden ratio and fibonacci sequence through “being the sunflower.” Students will participate in an interactive website where they control how a sunflower grows its seeds in a spiral to maximize their closeness. From there, the workshop goes into what the golden ratio means, what makes it special, how you can make it with the fibonacci sequence, and how it can be visualized as the golden spiral.

Math, Fibonacci Numbers, Golden Ratio, Middle School, High School