I went to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History this week and spotted a display describing how many shells follow a logarithmic spiral growth pattern. I’m a mathematician and code geek, amongst other things, so of course I went home and started writing code to model shell growth.
This image is one of the resulting virtual shells - nautilus-like shell with smooth appearance rather than having growth ribs and with the shell rendered transparent to show the internal structure (simulated “septa”, chamber divisions, and a simple siphuncle).
Obviously it’s not a photograph but, honestly, I think it's beautiful!
#naturalhistory #mathematics #geometry #shells #nautilus #scienceart







