The mystique of golden ratio

Washington, Dec. 21: The golden ratio is believed to have guided Egyptians in the construction of the Pyramids and Athenians to erect their imposing architecture.

It has even found echoes in The Da Vinci Code, where Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tried to unravel its mysteries.

Golden ratio is a geometric proportion that has been theorised to be the most aesthetically pleasing to the eye and has been the root of countless mysteries over the centuries.

Now, a Duke University engineer has found it to be a compelling springboard to unify vision, thought and movement under a single law of nature’s design.

Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke, says he knows why the golden ratio pops up everywhere: the eyes scan an image the fastest when it is shaped as a golden-ratio rectangle.
The ratio describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and a half times its width.

Many artists and architects have fashioned their works around this proportion.

For example, the Parthenon in Athens and Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa are two common examples.

The natural design that connects vision and cognition is a theory that flowing systems — from airways in the lungs to the formation of river deltas — evolve in time so that they flow more and more easily.

“When you look at what so many people have been drawing and building, you see these proportions everywhere,” Bejan said.