Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Splitting Spira Mirablis

Here is another spiral tree related post. This time I have used a logarithmic spiral, also known as the Spira Mirablis (Latin for the Miraculous Spiral).

This spiral appears in many places in nature and has a variety of interesting geometric properties. It was deeply studied by Jacob Bernoulli. He was infatuated with it to the point that he wanted it engraved on his tombstone along with the phrase "Eadem mutata resurgo" ("Although changed, I shall arise the same."). Unfortunately, the engraver put the wrong type of spiral on his tombstone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm loving all the fractals, but aren't you suppose to be studying :P