Sunflower experiment proves Alan Turing was right
Thousands of green-fingered gardeners have used sunflowers in an
experiment which appears to prove a theory drawn up by the mathematician
and computer pioneer Alan Turing 60 years ago.
In 1951, he
declared that the spiral shapes on the heads of sunflowers in his
Wilmslow garden followed a mathematical pattern called the Fibonacci
sequence.
Now gardeners across
the world have defied slugs and floods to grow their own sunflowers as
part of a project organised by the Museum of Science and Industry in
Manchester to prove that Turing was correct. More than eight out of ten
flowers they examined followed the same Fibonacci sequence – proving
that maths is an integral part of nature’s most beautiful creations. The
sequence is a set of numbers where each number is the sum of the
previous two (ie: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc).
Dr Erinma
Ochu, who managed the Turing’s Sunflowers project, said: “It’s been
brilliant to see sunflowers in bloom around the world and just goes to
show the power of citizens working together for this exciting mass
experiment.
“Thousands of people contributed to Turing’s
Sunflowers and although we were hampered by bad weather and slugs in
many cases, I’m delighted to have gathered a dataset that can be used in
the future by scientists to help understand why Fibonacci numbers occur
in nature and why they don’t.”
Turing, who was born in 1912,
developed early computer software and made huge leaps in artificial
intelligence. He made many of his greatest discoveries while working at
Manchester University and became known as the father of computer
science.
Read more at
http://menmedia.co.uk/
Image: http://
Sunflower experiment proves Alan Turing was right
Thousands of green-fingered gardeners have used sunflowers in an experiment which appears to prove a theory drawn up by the mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing 60 years ago.
In 1951, he declared that the spiral shapes on the heads of sunflowers in his Wilmslow garden followed a mathematical pattern called the Fibonacci sequence.
Now gardeners across the world have defied slugs and floods to grow their own sunflowers as part of a project organised by the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester to prove that Turing was correct. More than eight out of ten flowers they examined followed the same Fibonacci sequence – proving that maths is an integral part of nature’s most beautiful creations. The sequence is a set of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two (ie: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc).
Dr Erinma Ochu, who managed the Turing’s Sunflowers project, said: “It’s been brilliant to see sunflowers in bloom around the world and just goes to show the power of citizens working together for this exciting mass experiment.
“Thousands of people contributed to Turing’s Sunflowers and although we were hampered by bad weather and slugs in many cases, I’m delighted to have gathered a dataset that can be used in the future by scientists to help understand why Fibonacci numbers occur in nature and why they don’t.”
Turing, who was born in 1912, developed early computer software and made huge leaps in artificial intelligence. He made many of his greatest discoveries while working at Manchester University and became known as the father of computer science.
Read more at
http://menmedia.co.uk/
Image: http://
Thousands of green-fingered gardeners have used sunflowers in an experiment which appears to prove a theory drawn up by the mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing 60 years ago.
In 1951, he declared that the spiral shapes on the heads of sunflowers in his Wilmslow garden followed a mathematical pattern called the Fibonacci sequence.
Now gardeners across the world have defied slugs and floods to grow their own sunflowers as part of a project organised by the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester to prove that Turing was correct. More than eight out of ten flowers they examined followed the same Fibonacci sequence – proving that maths is an integral part of nature’s most beautiful creations. The sequence is a set of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two (ie: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc).
Dr Erinma Ochu, who managed the Turing’s Sunflowers project, said: “It’s been brilliant to see sunflowers in bloom around the world and just goes to show the power of citizens working together for this exciting mass experiment.
“Thousands of people contributed to Turing’s Sunflowers and although we were hampered by bad weather and slugs in many cases, I’m delighted to have gathered a dataset that can be used in the future by scientists to help understand why Fibonacci numbers occur in nature and why they don’t.”
Turing, who was born in 1912, developed early computer software and made huge leaps in artificial intelligence. He made many of his greatest discoveries while working at Manchester University and became known as the father of computer science.
Read more at
http://menmedia.co.uk/
Image: http://
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