Do you see how packed in the seeds are? But none of them gets smashed. The seed heads of flowers are in Fibonacci sequence spirals like you saw in the pinecones. See if you can find a drawing of a daisy. And there are a few flowers that don’t have Fibonacci numbers for petals. Some are hard to count because there are so many petals or they are in rows. Do you see that there are really two sets of three petals? The outside petals with the straight edges are not really petals. How many petals does it have? Do you see six? Are you thinking that six is not a Fibonacci number? Look more closely. Look at this flower (it’s a Blizzard Bay daylily, image courtesy of Barossa Daylilies). Now that you know what Fibonacci numbers are, you’re ready to go on a Fibonacci hunt. What do you notice about the number of spirals in each direction, now that you know about Fibonacci numbers? Lesson 2: Finding Fibonacci Now go back and look at those pinecone spirals. To get the next number in the sequence, you add the previous two numbers together. We call this the Fibonacci sequence, and the numbers are called Fibonacci numbers. (Isn’t it weird that they had word problems 800 years ago?) Fibonacci’s work on this problem led him to this sequence of numbers:Ġ, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 …Ĭan you figure out what the next number in the sequence will be? How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair begets a new pair from which the second month on becomes productive?” About 800 years ago, he wrote a book in which he included a math problem that went like this: “A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded by a wall. Most people call him Fibonacci (pronounced fib-o-nawch-ee).

To understand the spirals in pinecones, pineapples, daisies and lots of other things in nature, we have to meet a mathematician named Leonardo de Pisa. How many spirals go in the clockwise direction (green lines)? How many spirals go in a counter-clockwise direction (yellow lines)? Isn’t that strange? Wouldn’t you expect that they would be the same? Look at the pictures below to see what that looks like. They don’t go around and around in a circle - they go out like fireworks. It’s not just daisies! Nature is all about math. It is made up of sets of spirals that go out from the center. Have you ever pulled the petals off of a daisy? If you look closely at the center of a daisy, you will find that the yellow center is not solid.

Lesson 1: Introduction to Fibonacci numbers Create a Fibonacci rectangle and spiral.Generate the next numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.Identify Fibonacci numbers in nature and art.Explain Fibonacci numbers and their origin.Learning ObjectivesĪfter completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: Although not normally taught in the school curriculum, particularly in lower grades, the prevalence of their appearance in nature and the ease of understanding them makes them an excellent principle for elementary-age children to study. Fibonacci numbers are an interesting mathematical idea.

Fibonacci sequence in nature worksheet