CHAPTER 12: Amazing Math-Science-Arts Connections: Getting Insights Into the Golden Ratio

How can teachers help students of all ages to make connections between mathematics and other disciplines? The workshop we conducted during the MACAS3 Symposium highlights some possibilities to explore multiple links between mathematics, sciences, and arts using the golden ratio. Participants discussed how the use of a more holistic interdisciplinary teaching approach would enable students to discover the beauty, the complexity, and the utility of mathematics in today’s world.

In this chapter we will present examples of mathematical activities that may help schoolchildren discover the golden ratio, a mathematical concept that can be studied in different contexts. This ratio (often expressed as one of two sides of a so-called golden rectangle) is a very particular number, whose value equals approximately to 1.618. It can be found in many areas of mathematics and real life, including architecture, music, art, and nature and can be expressed in many different forms, which may be surprisingly complex and interconnected. Very often, authors refer to this number as expression of beauty of our world. According to Fett (2006, p. 157) the golden ratio has “inspired thinkers in many disciplines, more so than any other number in the history of mathematics.” Scholars have also argued that the golden ratio has also been considered the most perfect number in nature (Narain, 2001).