Perfectly pleasing to our eye

A Golden Rectangle is a rectangle in which the ratio of the length to the width is the Golden Ratio. For example, if one side of a Golden Rectangle is 2 metres long, the other side will be approximately equal to 2 * (1.62) = 3.24. It is the most pleasing of all rectangles.

If you have a Golden Rectangle and you cut a square off it so that what remains is a rectangle, that remaining rectangle will also be a Golden Rectangle. You can keep cutting these squares off and getting smaller and smaller Golden Rectangles. Drawing a line through the points, as shown, will give you a spiral very like that found in a nautilus shell.

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio is a special number approximately equal to 1.6180339887498948482. Like Pi, the digits of the Golden Ratio go on forever without repeating.