Math: It’s How Plants Work January 11, 2012

Math: It’s How Plants Work

By Hemant Mehta
January 11, 2012

Vi Hart‘s math videos just keep getting better. In case you missed Part 1 of her Fibonacci series (Ha! Math humor!), check this out.

Part 2 is here and it’s even better than the first:

My jaw dropped around the 4:00 mark.

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  • Gus Snarp

    I love how she explains the mechanism that could lead to Fibonacci sequences appearing in so many plants in a way that doesn’t promote some religious, new-agey, spiritual kind of explanation. She doesn’t go into evolution, of course, but she shows how it is so simple for a plant to execute that you can easily imagine how it could appear randomly and be coded and selected for in successful DNA.

    The question for biologists then is how many times did this evolve independently, or could it have evolved once in a very early plant and been passed to all these descendants?

    Can’t wait for part three where she talks about the “exceptions”.

  • Abram Larson

    Math might be how plants work, but Brawndo is what they crave. 

    (sorry couldn’t resist, I really do like these videos)

  • Rajesh Shenoy

    Man, the next 2 weeks’re gonna KILL me … what ARE these mutants with 4, 7 spirals?!

  • Chris Harmon

    This is helping math be real for my grrls. Thank you.

  • Eleanor O’Neill

    Her videos are amazingly awesomely wonderful in so many ways and for so many reasons!

  • Rich Wilson

    Four-leaf clover?

  • lyinsteve

    Genetic mutation, not very detrimental to survival, enabling it to live among its 3-leafed brethren. And since they have no concept of intolerance, all is right in the plant world.

  • Dan W

    She makes some great videos.

  • Anonymous

    yess ooo wctube

  • Nordog

    Great video, though I couldn’t help wondering if she might want to cut down on the caffeine.

  • MariaO

    If you like Fibonacci numbers, keep your eyes open at the Vomero station of the Metro in Naples. When you come up the first stairs you see three doglike creatures with the numbers 89, 144, 233. If that is not enough of a clue, at the next level threr is a spiral in the roof, with the numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 along its arm at appropriate places (i guess 55 is somewhere too, but I missed it). There are to little math art in metrostations world wide!