The Apple Snail Rides Again

The Apple Snail is slower than a racehorse or a cheetah but much faster than a plant. And it's about the same rate of speed as Mrs. Giveon on any given day due to her busted knees. Understanding that snails are not necessarily "slow" without having a rate of speed in comparison set the pace of the Science/Art learning experience today.

Opening day at school meant a longer than usual attendance time (more time/speed comparisons!) . After the opening twang of the tuning fork greeting the children back, we got touchy-feelie with the largest fresh water snail on earth.

Snails are part of South Florida children's lives. They race around the gardens or slug along the canal banks. Understanding one's own backyard is the best place to start curiosity investigation.

No sooner did I plop the snail shell in each child's hand did they begin to investigate with rulers, thermometers, two types of magnifying glasses and unaided sight. (Or sight corrected glasses.)

Discussing why the snails change shells due to outgrowth, one student discovered a crack in the shell with the magnifying glass. He said, "I see why it needed to leave!!!!!" Whether or not that was the true reason for the crack, the child made a logical connection to our class discussion.

Imagination, investigation and self-expression...that's Science/Art in a snail's shell.

Fat colored crayons and freshly sharpened pencils teetering in the balance scales enabled the children to express the spirals and shapes of their long whiskered Apple Snail.

It was also their first-hand hand, first -day exposure to  perfect geometry.

The Ancient Greek and Roman artists and architects called it the Sacred or Golden Geometry. Masters Artist / Scientist Leonardo Da Vinci drew the most famous Man in the Circle in this perfect geometry. It is also called the Golden Ratio. Below are the proportions in math. Mathematicians use numbers:  Artists use their eyeballs to sight it.  Artists who are trained Classically eventually zing into the golden proportions instinctively. This golden ratio is so significant that we, in modern times, take it for granted. But it is the very reason our culture uses the rectangle shape for our school note paper. By contrast, do we write on clay spheres? No...not usually.



Exposing children to perfection in mathematical ratios whether they know it yet or not, will positively influence their sense of balance in their art and science life to come. Their sense of balance will become "natural". 

 

The Apple Snail's perfect ratio from the starting spiral to it's tuba-like opening is the closest I could get to the Chambered Nautilus. And it is our own Florida native creature...vital to our wildlife habitat. Unravel the snail and you spiral into the greatest galaxies of learning.

 http://www.geometrycode.com/sacred-geometry/

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio (a.k.a. phi ratio a.k.a. sacred cut a.k.a. golden mean a.k.a. divine proportion) is another fundamental measure that seems to crop up almost everywhere, including crops. (The golden ratio is about 1.618033988749894848204586834365638117720309180…) The golden ratio is the unique ratio such that the ratio of the whole to the larger portion is the same as the ratio of the larger portion to the smaller portion. As such, it symbolically links each new generation to its ancestors, preserving the continuity of relationship as the means for retracing its lineage.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_geometry