You probably know that nature is crawling with the Fibonacci numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. But have you ever seen a simple explanation for this phenomenon? This video is the result of my own quest to distill a really accessible explanation from existing research.

Enjoy :)

In the last video on continued fractions I mentioned that part of the explanation involves the golden ratio and the fact that this number is the most irrational number. I'll talk about this in a followup video. If you cannot wait check out this website: http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted...
Also check out the following video produced as part of research by Douady and Couder about how simple displacement at the center of a plant gives rise to Fibonacci numbers of spirals
   • Douady & Couder Magnetic Fluid Spiral...  
The paper itself can be found here https://www.math.ntnu.no/~jarlet/Doua...
Another very interesting approach by Levitov involves a magnetic cactus, vortices in superconductors and the fabulous Farey numbers: http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature...