I’m participating in the A to Z Challenge for the entire month of April, by posting an interesting topic for each letter of the alphabet. Follow this link to nearly 2000 other bloggers and authors.
The A to Z Challenge – participating blogs
Today’s Calliope’s Writing Tablet post is brought to you by the letter R — R for Repetition.
I offer a picture post of repetition. Several days ago, I posted Fibonacci and Fractals for letter F. This post adds to that mathematical curiosity. Why do patterns repeat? We see this repetition everywhere. Take spirals, for example. It’s said that spirals take the least amount of energy to produce. From the whorl on a baby’s scalp, to the spiral galaxies in the vast universe, to our own DNA strands, spirals are our reminders that we are at once both unique and mundane.
Then we have the tessellations. From the Latin tessellātus, it means mosaic. Off the top of my head I give you a few: honeycombs, fish scales, giraffe spots, turtle shells, pineapples, reptile skin, tidal pools, and Giants Causeway in Ireland.
From here I could go into polygons and pentagons (seen in flower petal arrangements). I could discuss the fact the number 3 and 5 repeat in the natural world. I could also touch upon symmetry and how humans are attracted to it. No, too much info will make this post too large. I’ll save those for another day. 🙂
Here’s a well done and cute explanation in three videos. I love the rapid-fire delivery.
And this one is incredible.
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This is such a fun post. Patterns, spirals, math…lots of intriguing items in this one!
The whole thing is mind-blowing isn’t it?