Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Spiral Path of a Blindfolded Man

in 1916 the American zoologist Asa Schaeffer observed that an amoeba placed on a cylindrical surface always moved in a spiral path around the cylinder. To further study spiral movement, Schaeffer blindfolded a right-handed friend and instructed him to walk a straight line across a country field. Schaeffer plotted his friend's track, which described a clockwise spiral form until the man happened to stumble on a tree stump.

From the aptly named Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

No comments: