Monday, October 17, 2011

Nerd Alert!

DISCLAIMER: I am a nerd... I am well aware... If you don't care for nerdy things... don't read...

Next week I am going to be teaching a couple of classes for our 6th grade Outdoor Ed program. I am really excited because I get to teach about Math in Nature. I wrote the curriculum for it last week and I literally can't stop thinking about it. It's fun to plan something and be so excited about it that you just sort of accept the fact that other people might not think it is as cool as you do. I think seeing Math in Nature is super cool. For example, the Fibonacci Sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55...) can be seen everywhere in Nature! Take the family tree of a male Honey Bee:

- A male Honey Bee is produced from the unfertilized egg of a Queen (female that is fed special hormones in order to produce eggs) Bee. Meaning they only have one parent.
- A female Honey Bee is produced from a fertilized egg: i.e. they have a mom and a dad.

So if we trace the family tree of a Male Honey Bee, you get something that looks like the following.
Anyone notice a pattern? If you go up the levels, you will notice that you have 1 Bee, who has 1 parent, who has 2 parents, then 3 parents, then 5 parents... And so on and so forth... It's the Fibonacci sequence people... So Cool!!!

I know I am a nerd... Don't say I didn't warn you!

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