Fibonacci spirals in nature

clipped from physorg.com Scientists find clues to the formation of Fibonacci spirals in nature While the aesthetics and symmetry of Fibonacci spiral patterns has often attracted scientists, a mathematical or physical explanation for their common occurrence in nature is yet to be discovered. Recently, scientists have successfully produced Fibonacci spiral patterns in the lab, and found that an elastically mismatched bi-layer structure may cause stress patterns that give rise to Fibonacci spirals. The discovery may explain the widespread existence of the pattern in plants. Patterns that evolve naturally are generally an optimized configuration for an assembly of elements under an interaction,” Cao explained to PhysOrg.com. “We conjecture that the Fibonacci spirals are the configuration of least elastic energy.