That’s right! Not pi, but Phi! In mathematics, the golden ratio or Phi, refers to two values having special traits connected to each other. In order for these two values to contain the golden ratio, the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger one equals the ratio of the larger to the smaller one. The number this then equals, is an irrational number: 1.6180339887 and so on. The golden ratio refers to the words “Perfect” and “Beauty”. Some other names for the golden ratio are “Golden Section, Golden Mean, Divine Proportion, Divine Section, Golden Number, Golden Proportion, and Mean of Phidias”.

More importantly, the golden ratio was also referred to as “Extreme and Mean Ratio”. This is important because when the Greek Mathematicians first were interested in this ratio, they found a connection between two lines in different geometrical shapes. Their definition of this was: “A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratiowhen, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less.” Which, in the first paragraph, explains the ratio in a much more thorough manner. This ratio seems to pop up everywhere. It has appeared in songs, Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings, pyramids in egypt, plant veins, flower pedals, and so many more.

 The reason this value is sometimes referred to as “Golden”-ratio or “Divine”-proportion, is because studies made my some scientists, mainly Fechner, have been testing whetherr the Divine Proportion has shown up in human “beauty”. In connection with his scheme for golden-ratio-based human body proportions, Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law “in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.” I guess if any of you have seen the movie “The Number 23″, this is a similar concept except for the fact that it’s more real! Please, check out the wikipedia site on more information about this interesting topic, I’m making it boring!

RJ