DivineNathicana Posted April 30, 2005 Report Share Posted April 30, 2005 Hey guys, I need to turn a science fair project in by the end of May, and I still haven't come up with what to do... Since I'm taking Biology right now, I am forced to make my project biological. I was thinking about doing something with Phyllotaxis, or the study of the arrangements of leaves, petals and seeds in plants and relative to each other. It's kind of interesting how the leaves, seeds, and petals form at an angle of Phi away from each other and how the seeds of plants like sunflowers form parastichies, or winding spirals in opposite directions. The numbers of such spirals (in each of the two directions) are consecutive Fibonaccis. It's an interesting topic but I have no idea what to do... There has to be a question that I have to answer by conducting an experiment. Please help? Thanks in advance, Alisa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted April 30, 2005 Report Share Posted April 30, 2005 There has to be a question that I have to answer by conducting an experiment. Maybe keep it simple: Theory: The distribution of branches on a tree, and arrangement of leaves and seeds on sunflowers, are based on the value of phi. Experiment: Observe X amount of trees and sunflowers, measure distribution, verify/falsify theory. Conclusions: (Now here you're on your own) :circle: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UncleAl Posted April 30, 2005 Report Share Posted April 30, 2005 Google"Scientific American" "Fibonacci" phi 405 hits"Scientific American" "Fibonacci" sunflower 114 hits"Scientific American" "Fibonacci" "tree branches" 9 hits "Scientific Amercan is not an acceptable literature citation. It will get you started, and then you can proceed to more scholarly stuff. http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop-bm.pdfhttp://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/alife/doc/bib/lsys.bib(despite crappy page formatting) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DivineNathicana Posted May 1, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2005 I was planing to maybe grow a few plants normally and a few with strings attached to their leaves preventing them from forming golden angles. However, I don't know of a good enough "protractor" that could measure angles accurately enough to get this to work: just .02 degrees produces an entirely different pattern, so I need to be able to measure that accurately. Anyone know anything I can use? Thanks, Alisa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishteacher73 Posted May 6, 2005 Report Share Posted May 6, 2005 Perhaps a simple analysis of leaf surface area to phi ratio... There might be a specific correlation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DivineNathicana Posted May 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 11, 2005 Like, measuring if leaf area is related to divergence angle? I think measuring leaf area would be even harder than measuring the divergence angle haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C1ay Posted May 11, 2005 Report Share Posted May 11, 2005 Have you looked at +biology +"golden ratio" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted May 15, 2005 Report Share Posted May 15, 2005 ___Sufficient math references above, but I wish to note tying the leaves is not changing the biological constraint to phylotaxy. If you stop training a bonsai & plant it in the ground, it will resume normal growth.___Now genetically altering a plant to consistantly grow is some other "math' pattern, that would be an experiment. :friday: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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