The Golden Ratio in Electronics
by Dennis L Feucht
From ancient times, a particular ratio of width to height was considered most aesthetically pleasing and is called the golden ratio. The fifth-century BC Parthenon at Athens, Greece was built with the frontal dimensions of a Golden Rectangle. It appeared earlier in the Great Pyramid at Giza. The golden ratio appears later in the painting of the Mona Lisa. And it shows up nontrivially in somewhat obscure places in modern electronics.
More instances of it have been found in recent times when in 1876, German psychologist Gustav Fechner made thousands of measurements of common items such as playing cards, windows, and book covers, and found that their dimensional ratios were close to the golden ratio. The DIN standards committee, in standardizing paper shapes and sizes, had the goal of minimizing waste in paper cutting by choosing a format which would retain a similar shape after bisection.
...download complete article here (277 KB PDF)
|
