DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 23 (UPI) -- A U.S. researcher says eye biology is key to why the golden ratio -- used to build the Pyramids -- makes ancient architecture aesthetically pleasing.
The golden ratio is a geometric proportion that describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and a half times its width.
Adrian Bejan of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering in Durham, N.C., says the golden ratio pops up everywhere because the eyes scan an image fastest when it is shaped as a golden-ratio rectangle.
"When you look at what so many people have been drawing and building, you see these proportions everywhere," Bejan says in a statement. "It is well known that the eyes take in information more efficiently when they scan side-to-side, as opposed to up and down."
The natural design that connects vision and cognition is a theory that flowing systems -- from airways in the lungs to the formation of river deltas -- evolve in time so they flow more and more easily, Bejan says.
Bejan termed this the constructal law in 1996, and its latest application appears online in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics.
