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Sectio divina
Dr H. Waalkens
The subject of this lecture is the number or ratio known as the golden mean. Many aspects of the very special nature of this number have been
know for several centuries. One of its geometrical features even lead to the notion of a divine section or sectio divina which has often been seen as
the essence of completeness and beauty.
On a short expedition we will explore how the golden mean is not only exploited by man in architecture and art but by nature itself.
Within mathematics the golden mean belongs to a class of numbers which can be considered as the antipodes of the rational numbers among the real. It is
this maximal dissonance as opposed to the resonance associated with rational numbers which gives the golden mean a meaning beyond pure number theory.
Interestingly, this property of the golden mean is significant in a fairly recent stability result on mechanical systems.
This result will be illustrated by an experiment.
This page last updated 26th September 2005