Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart

The book under review Nature's Numbers by Ianthe same for all the six planets!
Stewart is worth reading by one and all.Io, Europa, and Ganymede are three of Jupiter's
Ian Stewart is the author of over sixty books. Inlarger satellites. They orbit the planet in,
a very lucid style he explains the complicatedrespectively, 1.77. 3.55, and 7.16 days. Each of
mathematics that is found in nature to a layman.these numbers is almost exactly twice the
He writes the well-known 'Mathematicalprevious one. There is a significant pattern.
Recreations' column in the famous magazineIt is interesting to note about the Ship/Dock
'Scientific American'.theorem. That is, if you want to change the word
To the non-mathematical readers the book is aship into the word dock by changing one letter at
boon.a time and getting a valid word at every stage,
The book has nine chapters namely, The naturalyou will find that all solutions have one thing at
order, What mathematics is for, Whatcommon: at least one of the intermediate words
mathematics is about, The constants of change,must contain two vowels. Readers will be
From violins to videos, Broken Symmetry, Themotivated to do this puzzle on their own to find
rhythm of life, Do dice play God, Drops,out the result.
Dynamics, and Daisies. All the chapters are withThe rhythm of life is wonderful. In nature
very interesting examples.everything is rhythmic! There are numerous
In chapter one titled, Natural Order, the authorexamples given in the chapter 'The rhythm of life'.
explains the amazing facts of patterns that areThe author analyses the chaos theory in the
found in the nature! In nearly all flowers, thechapter 'Do dice play God'.
number of petals is one of the numbers thatThere is a list of books for further reading to
occur in the strange sequence 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34,those who are interested to know more about
55, 89!natures' secrets.
The great scientist Kepler found that if you takeIt is highly recommended that all should read this
the cube of the distance of any planet from thebook to understand natures' secrets or rather
Sun and divide it by the square of its orbitalsecrets of God!
period, you always get the same number. It was