• Question: why does nature have recurring patterns??

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Great question! Sometimes it’s just chance that similar things evolve independently. Other times there’s a mathematical or physical reason.

      One example is the shape of ferns. This is quite close to something called a fractal in maths. These arise because the growth pattern for a fern is a set of repeating simple rules, depending on the initial conditions.

      There’s a whole set of books by Philip Ball about this called Nature’s Patterns. He argues that similar patterns come whenever something’s organising a system. He goes through loads of examples, like the fact that beehives have a regular structure so they have loads of surface area to store honey!

    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      when we use maths to solve a problem we’re trying to find the best possible solution. Nature solves the same problems by just trying things and seeing what works, but when you have millions of plants and animals all trying out different solutions for millions of years they’re pretty good at finding the right answers, so its hardly surprising that nature would have come up with the same solutions that maths does.

      In computer graphics we describe plants using L-Systems. They were originally developed by a biologist called Lyndenmeyer (or something like that), to describe the structure of plants he found but its actually a mini programming language, and it got picked in CG so we can type the code for an L-System into the computer, and it will make all sorts of plants, each slightly different but all with the same structure.

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