So I really like pinecones - I have a bunch just lying around my room because I find them very spirally and pretty. But in addition to that, they're beautifully mathematical. All you have to do is count the number of spirals; this pinecone has 8 going this way...
And 13 the other way. Two of my other pinecones have 3 spirals and 5 spirals, and 5 and 8 spirals. Sound familiar? These are adjacent Fibonacci numbers - seriously, the series you get by adding the two previous numbers that goes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34... shows up everywhere in nature, from sunflower seeds to artichokes to pineapples. This is because these Fibonacci arrangements result in the optimal packing of seeds/leaves/plant bits, so that they are all uniformly spaced and can maximize the amount of sunlight they receive. The more you look for these instances of Fibonacci numbers in the world around you, the more you'll find them - delightful glimpses into the mathematics in which our universe is written.
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