#naturenerds

Unit 1 Blog Post

As someone who lives in suburbia, I have always found it difficult to get involved with nature. I live in a row of “cookie-cutter” houses with a few trees surrounding the house and little parcels of untouched nature scattered throughout the rest of the neighbourhood. I had ventured into these fractured pieces of the forest a few times over the years, but I never felt I appreciated them as my visits were sparse and I was usually just traversing the forest to get to a different destination. I always thought I had a positive relationship with nature and spent time in it, but in hindsight, I felt it had been more of a neutral relationship where we coexisted with each other.

The advent of adopting my dog, Scout, at fourteen is when I felt my relationship with nature shift. She is a large breed dog and I felt she deserved the ability to go on long walks and not just in urban environments, I wanted to find forests where she could roam free. So, my family began to explore by driving to different hiking trails and environmental parks, discovering places to adventure and making a new natural environment the destination. Venturing out daily to explore certainly increased and then bolstered my affinity towards the natural world. I fondly think about all the new places discovered and the stories I have to tell about every location. All of that said, I am aware I am fortunate to be able to surround myself with nature whenever I can due to a lack of socioeconomic barriers and physical accessibility.

This I have been offered “a sense of place” by my family. Ever since I was an infant, my parents have encouraged me to explore the beauty of nature by camping at many of Ontario’s southern and eastern provincial parks and trekking across the many trails. The summer before university, we even travelled to southern Africa where I was witness to the breathtaking landscape, an unforgettable experience I would recommend to any who can afford it. Additionally, most summers, I head to my grandparents’ cabin in the beautiful Riding Mountain National Park located in Manitoba where I swim and enjoy the lakeside scenery or hike the Ominik marsh walk and various trails to get a breath of fresh air.

Moreover, surrounding myself with nature has always brought me a sense of calm, quieting the chaos of normal life. It makes me feel grounded as it reminds me that my problems are minuscule in the grand scheme of the whole natural world. I also observe how the plants can flourish despite the hardships the Canadian weather and wilderness presents and it reminds me to be resilient because if they can survive without nurturing and shelter, I should certainly be able to when afforded those comforts.

Due to a plethora of great experiences in nature, I have a great love and respect for nature that is unparalleled, so much so that I aspire to give back through pursuing animal or environmental law.

I am excited to join you all on this new adventure, talk to you soon fellow nature nerds!

Unit 09 Blog

Though they may seem so different, math and nature intersect with a common ground rooted in symmetry, the natural constant, and Fibonacci’s sequence.

Symmetry can occur in three different ways: rotational symmetry, bilateral symmetry, and translational symmetry. Rotational symmetry can be described as when you rotate an object upon its own axis, its shape still looks the same. Rotational symmetry is replicated in nature very frequently in flowers, for example, but they are also an example of bilateral symmetry at the same time. Bilateral symmetry occurs when an image is inverted perpendicularly through the plane, this could also be considered reflection or mirror symmetry. Butterflies are a classic example of bilateral symmetry in nature, so are many other insects. Lastly, translational symmetry occurs when each point in a figure is moved the same distance in the same direction. This was certainly the one furthest from my mind, but upon further inspection, looking at many images of nature enlightened me to the fact that it the structures of crystals and honeycombs present in a beehive.

Have you noticed any other types of symmetry in nature? If not, do any particular examples of symmetry in nature fascinate you? Explain why. Personally, I quite enjoy bilateral symmetry as it reminds me of that form of art I would do as a child where I would fold a paper in half, open it and place paint on one side in a design, fold it closed along the already formed crease, and reopen it to a beautiful, bilaterally symmetrical, image. Moreover, I believe it is appealing to the human eye as we humans are, mostly, bilaterally symmetric and familiarity is comforting.

As for the natural constant, mathematically known as “e”, is something known as Euler’s number (Ping, 2016). Named after famous mathematician Leonhard Euler, Euler’s number is a constant that appears with exponential growth or decay (Ping, 2016). What is riveting about this mathematical constant is that it is easily found in the natural world within the growth of plants or ammonite shells (Ping, 2016). There are countless occurrences of it within the natural, but you may recognize it from logarithmic equations in math classes.

Lastly, I want to mention the Fibonacci sequence. If you are like me, you recall learning about this string of numbers in which each number that appears is a sum of the previous two numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. (Carlson, 2019). What is unique about these numbers is that the ratio between any number and the one prior it follows a 1:1.618 ratio famously known as the golden ratio (Carlson, 2019). In nature, it can be observed in the shell of a snail, the petals of flowers, the pattern of sunflower seeds, or the spiral pattern of a pine cone (Carlson, 2019). In the media, you may have heard references to the golden ratio in related beauty: it is commonly held as the mathematical symmetry algorithm underlying what we perceive as attractive (Carlson, 2019). This related back to nature’s presence in our lives as a “gift of beauty” (Beck et al., 2018). All of this said, if math is in nature and nature is beautiful, then math can be beautiful. Do you agree? Can’t wait to hear what you think!

Can you think of any other examples of math in nature?

Talk to you soon fellow nature nerds!

Beck, L., Cable, T.T. & Knudson, D.M. (2018). Interpreting Cultural and Natural Heritage for a Better World. Sagamore-Venture Publishing.

Carlson, S. C. (2019). Golden ratio. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/golden-ratio