Golden Ratio Project Description

My Golden Ratio Project

As of today, Monday, April 27th, 2015, I have now almost finally completed my project studying into the sacred mathematical concept of the Golden Ratio.  The Golden Ratio, pronounced “Phi” in Greek is an irrational number similar to that of “Pi” whose first 4 digits are 1.618; however, hence being irrational, its digits go on forever.  It is a ratio that roughly matches the fibonacci sequence as you go on and on with it; for instance, a Fibonacci Spiral and a Golden Ratio Spiral are roughly the same in appearance.  Also, if one should decide to try and create a golden ratio spiral, they should start by curving the spiral through larger and larger squares that increase in size in accordance with the Fibonacci Sequence.  Either way, this picture with the image of a spiral shaped galaxy and a golden Spiral line superimposed over it on Geogebra demonstrates how Galaxies frequently form in a spiral shape, and occasionally in a golden ratio spiral shape, along with many other objects and organisms found in nature.  These things ranging from nautilus sea shells, all the way to the heads of Romanesco cauliflowers form and increase in size in accordance with the Golden Ratio--I even saw this with some Romanesco Cauliflowers in Greenstar a couple months ago!  Before I transition to talking more about what academic goals this project covers--especially in regards to my senior online portfolio, I would like to mention that the Galaxy superimposed on this powerpoint slide is our Milky Way Galaxy.  With that, I will move on to talk about the more purely academic side of this project.  

Last year, when I participated in the New Roots Honors program, I signed up to ideally complete the work for and gain Honors Credit in US History and Government, Science, and also in Math.  Whilst I completed the requirements for the first two classes by the end of the year, I did not quite manage to get the Math project done on top of all the other work during that time.  As such, I did not get Honors credit in Math that year after all.  Now however, even though I am not in the Honors Program and Sacred Geometry is not the Math Class that I am taking currently, I am still going to be getting extra credit for this in my Math Class.  So Chris, here’s the artifact of my research into the concept of the Golden Ratio, as well as practice at the skill of graphing a spiral on Geogebra.  Now I have finally completed an extra credit math project on the Golden Ratio which is something I have been wanting to do since the end of 9th grade!  Also, I have done ALMOST ABSOLUTELY the opposite of give up on this project which gave me trouble last year towards the end in Math Class!  So, with that said Chris, may I present to you, my Golden Galactic Milky Way Portrait!  Now that I have covered my interests in doing this project from the angle of Math, both academically and materially, I will move on to talk about how this project fits into my Senior Online Portfolio.  

First off, I feel that this artifact meets the Schoolwide Outcome (S.W.O.) of “Lifelong Learners”.  Second off, if I must put it into an artifact submission category, I will hereby submit it as a special interests artifact.  It is a special interest artifact because it is not something that was assigned to me directly in school, nor even about content that would normally be taught to me as part of the high school Math Curriculum; it was just an extra area of math that I’ve been interested in for a long time and wanted to explore separate from the required math content in my high school courses.  And, the artifact which I created after my research was another thing that was not assigned to me as part of the normal course load, but instead something that I had interest in doing and therefore took independent initiative on.  Finally, I want to move on to talking about what this project means about me as a lifelong learner.  

This project clearly aligns to the schoolwide outcome of “Lifelong Learners” because it is just one of many examples of how I continue to research and explore new topics that I’m interested in; needless to say, I don’t need to be forced to learn things in school; I already want to learn about new things all the time in my life, and the Golden Ratio is one of them!