The following is a description that exceeds my capacity to articulate what the golden mean is. It can be found at http://galaxy.cau.edu/tsmith/KW/golden.html. "The Golden Mean is a ratio that is present in the growth patterns of many things--the spiral formed by a shell or the curve of a fern, for example. The Golden Mean or Golden Section was derived by the ancient Greeks. Like "pi", the number 1.618... is an irrational number. Both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians used the Golden Mean when designing their buildings and monuments. The builders of Paestum used the Golden Mean in their temples. Artists as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci and George Seurat used the ratio when constructing their paintings. These artists and architects discovered that by utilizing the ratio 1 : 1.618..., they could create a feeling of order in their works. Even today, artists are still using this proportion in their works, and scientists, like Roger Penrose are discovering new things about the Golden Mean and its place in science, mathematics, and nature... The Fibonacci Series and the Golden Mean are intimately connected. The Fibonacci Series is a series of number in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers: 1 + 1 = 2 1 + 2 = 3 2 + 3 = 5 3 + 5 = 8 5 + 8 = 13 8 + 13 = 21, etc." I will only add that to illustrate, you can look at a pinecone (or snails or many other spiralling objects in nature) and find that the first rung of the spiral contains one of an element, the second rung contains 2, the third contains 3, the 4th contains 5, etc. Pretty cool! Hope this helps. Diane
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