Whats the name for that rule of aesthetics that has been descussed here. We were using it to figure the proper length of forearms if i remember correctly. Something six or six somthing?

the golden segment or proportion.

THANKS JEFFE!!

The golden mean, or, golden ratio.

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

The "Golden Mean" or "Golden Ratio/section" or the mean of Phidias...~5x8 or 8x5...the ratio of 1 : 1.618034.

Seen everywhere in nature in the swirls in a sunflowers seeds and the petal arrangement of other flowers, spider webs, the shell shape of snails, many sea shells, Ammonite fossils and Nautilus, in some geometric figures such as the pentagram(a 5 pointed star) and a triacontahedron rhombus, AKA Fibonacci sequence, used by Leonardo Da Vinci in his "Vitruvian Man" depiction and in the Parthenon, The Theorem of Pythagoras, Keplers Triangle and more recently Roger Penrose in aperiodic tilings and quasicrystals...and many paintings.

Symbolized by the Greek letter phi.

Basically, it's that figure or object that has pleasing lines or expands in a specific way and looks "balanced" to many/most observers...

or not.

Luck

Foobar

You lost me on Pythagoras. Is there any relationship other than the fact that a Kepler triangle is a right triangle?

Thanks Foobar. That is an excellent explanition & examples of the golden mean that everyone can relate too. May I quote you?

Not me per se...quote the sources...most any geometry book on my book shelves has bits and pieces, libraries are full of excellent references and a search online will give you literally millions of bits and bytes of info...a couple of very interesting books: "The Golden Ratio, the story of phi(Φ), the worlds most astonishing number" by Mario Livio and "Growing Patterns:Fibonacci numbers in nature" by Sara Campbell...mathamatics, the "stuff" behind the numbers and early mathamaticians have always interested me historically speaking...not that I'm any sharp pencil. (mathamatically speaking)

Keplers triangle is a special form of a right triangle that has edges related to the golden ratio is what I was refering to...it is slightly different than your regular old Pythagorean triangle. Check out Wikipedia for an easy?? way to construct one.

The Pythagoreans were very serious about numbers relating to certain forms to the extent of supposedly killing a person for revealing some of their secrets. The Pythagerean numerologists were instrumental in finding many "strange" things going on with "their" numbers...not just the form most people are familiar with...A² + B² = C²...and phi(Φ) kept showing up in their geometric forms...simply put.

5/8 (or 8/5) is a rational number, whereas phi is actually irrational.

e, Eulers number 2.71828, i for the imaginary numbers, 0, 1, and pi - 3.1415, are all numbers that have "special" properties, without which we wouldn't have computers or go to the planets.

Luck

You guys got me by the Fibonaccis on this thread.