Lackhead.org

I have a burgeoning art project at home and before I begin I’ve wanted to do some research into the organization of seeds on a sunflower’s head. There is a very mathematical basis for the distribution of seeds that is based on the Fibonacci sequence and the closely related Golden Ratio. The Wikipedia entries are kind of dense, but there is a great short video that explains it all visually very well.

During my web-based research for this project, I came across some pretty neat resources. In particular,Dr. Ron Knott’s page, while visually a bit tedious, has a ton of information. But the most interesting that I’ve seen is this fantastic old video from an experiment using magnets and a ferrous solution. The idea is that the drops are magnetically charged similarly, so they repel each other, while being attracted to the outside of the oil-coated dish by magnets. Now, the film has the rate of release at several rates- at first it is pretty slow, but you can see that the drops are indeed repelling each other, moving towards opposite sides of the dish as they being attracted to the outer rim. As the rate of dropping speeds up, you see the interference patterns more clearly; the drops balance being repelled by all the other drops in the dish, and the new incoming ones, and as they move to the outside the self-arrange into spirals that are exactly what plants do when they grow seeds, etc.

There is more magic on this earth than are dreamt of in any philosophy….

-c