Número de oro

pliegues de papel

14 de julio de 2008
contenidos

1 Número de oro

2 regular pentagon
There are many things in mathematics that are beatiful, yet
sometimes the beauty is not apparent at first sight.This is not the
case with the Golden Section,which ought to be beautiful at first
sight, regardless of the form in which it is presented.The Golden
Section refers to the proportion in which a line segment is divided
by a point.
graficamente

B − − − − − − − P − − − − − −A
Simply, for the segment AB, the point P partitions (or divides) it
into two segment,AP and PB, such that

AP PB
=
PB AB

This proportion, apparently already known to the Egyptians and

the Greeks,was probably first named the “Golden Section“ or
“section aurea“ by Leonardo da Vinci, who drew geometric
diagrams for Fra Luca Pacioli’s book,De Divina Proportione(1509),
which dealt with this topic.
There are probably endless beauties involving this Golden
Section.One of these is the relative ease with which one can
construct the ratio by merely folding a strip of paper.

Simply have your student take a strip of paper, say about 1-2
inches widw, and make a knot.Then very carefully flatten the knot
as shown in the next figure.Notice the resulting shape appears to
be a regular pentagon,that is, a pentagon with all angles
congruent and all sides the same length.
regular pentagon

If the student use relatively thin translucent paper and hold it up to

a light,they ought to be able to see the pentagon with its
diagonals.These diagonals intersect each other in the Golden
Section(see below).
regular pentagon

Let’s take a closer look at this pentagon (figure).Point D divides

AC in to the Golden Section,since
DC AD
=
AD AC
We can say that the segment of length AD is the mean
proportional between the lengths of the shorter segment (DC) and
the entire segment (AC).
For some student audiences,it might be useful to show what the
value of the Golden Section is.To do this, begin with the isosceles
triangle ABC,whose vertex angle has measure 36o .Then consider
the bisector BD of ∠ABC(figure)
We find that m∠DBC = 36o .Therefore,4ABC 4BCD.Let AD = x
and AB = 1.However,since 4ABC y 4DBC are
isosceles,BC = BD = AD = x.

From the similiraty above,

1−x x
=
x 1
This gives us
√
2 5−1
x + x − 1 = 0 and x =
2
(The negative root cannot be used for the length of AD)

We recall that √
5−1 1
=
2 φ
The ratio for 4ABC of

side 1
= =φ
base x
We therefore call this a Golden Triangle.