Adrian Bejan | Physics of Beauty, from Design in Nature
In this video, Adrian Bejan explains how the Atlanta airport story and a question at the 2009 ASHRAE congress led him from the golden ratio, or divine proportion, as a popular observation to a brief explanation of why it happens. He connects what people like in paintings, facades, the laptop screen, and other rectangles to how the two eyes scan an image with saccades, taking snapshots at 5 per second across the flat field of vision. He describes scanning horizontally and up and down, and considers the best shape to be the one that lets the eyes scan the whole area as quickly as possible, because fast scanning helps you grasp the meaning of a message and move on. He then uses the binoculars drawing, with two discs and their intersection, to argue that vertical and horizontal scanning differ because the eyes move upward in parallel but horizontally in series. He ends by tying well-proportioned and complex rectangles stacked on rectangles, and by saying eyes and ears sit on the horizontal because the world is flat, and because fast scanning and fast understanding are useful.
Adrian Bejan says the Atlanta airport story first appeared in his 2000 book and was presented at the 2009 ASHRAE Congress. A participant said the drawing looked like the golden ratio, and Adrian Bejan said he figured out how to predict it and why it happens.
Bejan describes two eyes that jiggle with saccades, taking snapshots at 5 per second as they scan the field of vision. He says the shape matters because scanning fast helps you understand fast, and that is useful.
He treats the image as H and L, with scanning times along the horizontal and vertical axes, and he seeks the minimum total time. He says the fastest shape depends on the scanning speeds.
Bejan uses binoculars and the intersection of two discs to compare how the eyes sweep vertically and horizontally. He gets an order-of-magnitude ratio and links it back to the rectangles people like.
He connects the Renaissance and Uklid to the 618 dot dot dot ratio and the label divine proportion, then says science explains the attractiveness. He extends this to paragraphs, faces, and complexity as smaller rectangles stacked on bigger rectangles.
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