We all know that the world around us is explained by scientific methods, but the difficulty is to make those discoveries that science can explain. But the discovery of mathematics has made everything way easier for us. We can see math in nature all around us. Such as numerical patterns within plants and landscapes, even formulas have been used to predict mathematical anomalies such as black holes.
Meaning that math is not just a college or university subject that won’t matter to students after graduation. But instead, as some essay examples about mathematics in nature state, math is a science from which our world is made of. Also, those essays state that everything we observe has a mathematical explanation, even the most beautiful and complex things.
The following are some examples of things that describe nature with math, but those are not the only ones. There are many others as well.
Honeycombs
Bees are known as honey products, but they are also adept at geometry. For many years the humankind has been amazed by the wonderful hexagonal figures of the honeycombs. The hexagon is a shape that the bees create instinctively, but to recreate this shape, humans will need the help of a ruler and compass. The honeycombs are a great example of symmetry on wallpaper. This is where patterns are repeated until covering a whole plane. Such as tiled floors or mosaics.
Mathematicians believe that bees choose to make this shape for construction because it is the most efficient shape for strong the most amount of honey, with minimal use of wax. Other shapes, such as circles, wouldn’t fit together perfectly and have gaps between the cells. Although some also think that the bees make those shapes accidentally and refuse to believe that they are masterminds. But either way, it is an amazing example of mathematical patterns and symmetry in nature.
Starfish
Sea stars or Starfishes are phylum or marine creatures known as echinoderm. Other echinoderms are brittle stars, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, etc. Those creatures have bilateral symmetry, meaning that their sides are the same, forming a mirror image.
Sea stars are invertebrates that often have more than five arms, forming a pentaradial symmetry. However, it is believed that their ancestors used to have bilateral symmetry, and the Starfish have some remnant of that body structure.
Snowflakes
Snowflakes are another example of symmetry created by nature. They showcase six-fold radial symmetry, with identical, elaborate patterns on each of their sides or arms. Scientists already have a hard time understanding why symmetry exists in animals and plants, so the fact that it happens in lifeless objects enrages them.
They form because the molecule of the water naturally arranges when solidified, so, when water molecules crystallize, they make a weak hydrogen bond, and those bonds align with each other to reduce the repulsive forces and maximize the attractive ones. This is what causes them to form a hexagonal shape.
Other Space
Mathematical shapes and symmetry are seemed to exist on our planet, but they can also be seen in outer space. Recently scientists have become more confident that the galaxy has two major arms, the Perseus and the Scutum-Centaurus, which is a perfect mirror image. Another example of symmetry in the other space is the sun and the moon. The sun has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometers, and the moon 3,474 kilometers. The sun’s width is almost four hundred times further than the moon, but still, a solar eclipse can happen because of the symmetry of the ratio. That symmetry comes the sun and the moon to look the same when seen from earth. It is a phenomenon, and surely many like it are still unknown.
Nautilus Shell
This shell has a spiral shell with many small tentacles around the mouth. The nautilus showcases Fibonacci numbers, and the nautilus shell grows in a Fibonacci spiral. This happens because the shell is growing outwards while trying to maintain a proper shape.
Other animals or humans’ body proportions change with growth, but the nautilus stays the same shape throughout its whole life. Although every nautilus shell is not necessarily a Fibonacci, all of them have some kind of logarithmic spiral shape.
Conclusion: Your first thoughts of math until now might have been numbers, computers, books. But now that you know that math is also presented in nature all around us, you will start noticing mathematical shapes in everything. Mathematics forms the building blocks of our natural world, and if you pay more attention, you will be amazed at all the wonderful math things in the natural world.
