Nature and Geometry

Geometry is all around us, even if we don’t notice it. It’s in food, and items we use everyday. But it’s also in nature.

You can find geometry in nature by just looking out of your window. Do you see a tree? Well, the trunk of a tree is a cylinder, and three dimensional shapes are a part of geometry. Actually there are many three dimensional shapes in nature. If you look closely at a bird, you can see its beak looks like a cone. Even fruits, like oranges and apples are geometrical. Oranges and apples are spheres. Some beehives are in the shape of a sphere. In fact, there are also little hexagon-shaped holes on the beehives.

At first glance, the holes may seem to be two dimensional shapes, but they are    holes, which mean they have a depth. Speaking of two dimensional, it is very hard to find something that is actually two dimensional in nature.

If something is cut in half, and both sides are the same, that thing is symmetrical. Things can have more than one line of symmetry, too. Many people think of butterflies when someone tells them to choose something in nature with a line of symmetry. Butterflies have one line of symmetry, and that line is vertical. Ladybugs are another insect that have a vertical line of symmetry. Starfish have many lines of symmetry. They actually have five lines of symmetry! Also, many leaves from plants, like maple trees, have a vertical line of symmetry.

The last topic I will be sharing with you is angles in nature. It doesn’t seem like there are a lot of angles in nature, but there are. Grass blades, if lined up the right way can make acute angles. Starfish also make acute angles. People can actually make many angles. The space between people’s fingers are usually acute angles. They can also make any kind of angle with their arms, including straight angles. Actually, straight angles are almost everywhere in nature!

In conclusion, geometry is everywhere, so you should try to learn more about it. Also, next time you go outside really think about how geometry is in the things around you.

 

Glossary:

geometry- the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids, and higher dimensional analogs

three dimensional- having or appearing to have length, breadth, and depth

two dimensional- having or appearing to have length and breadth but no depth

symmetry- the quality of being made up of exactly similar parts facing each other or around an axis

line of symmetry- the imaginary line where you could fold the image and have both halves be the exact same

angle- the space (usually measured in degrees) between two intersecting lines or surfaces at or close to the point where they meet

Credit to Pictures:

Tree- fallout.wikia.com

Butterfly-blogs.lt.vt.edu

Grass Blades-www.pxleyes.com