Here is a spiral showing one whole year. Click on the top of each post to see which month it represents. Can you find September?
More stuff about the Equinox sculpture
There are 7 sets of posts.
Each set represents a year so has 12 posts.
The posts are placed 1 metre apart in a spiral.
The spiral is based on the Fibonacci series.
You add 2 numbers together to make the next one.
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34…..
Then draw a spiral using squares of those sizes.
Fibonacci Spirals are like Golden Spirals.
Lots of spirals like these occur in nature.
The posts form a spiral which has an Italian name. What is it? (Click on your answer to check)
Why is the post on the right shorter than the one on the left?
The artists ran out of wood to make the pole.
The artists felt the cylinders looked better that way.
Summer daylight hours are longer than Winter ones.
The scultpure is called Equinox. Where does the word Equinox come from?
A Medieval Oxfordshire horse fair; from the Latin equinus=to do with horses + OX=the postcode.
The Equinox is when day and night are the same length; from the Latin aequus=equal + nox=nighttime
A corruption of the Italian acqua+gnocchi, pasta cooked in water invented by Fibonacci.
There are seven sets of posts. What do you think the seven represent?
The Seven Wonders of the World
Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man
What could the posts be used for?
Tell the time/track the path of the Sun
Hang your washing out to dry.
Each set of twelve posts represents what?
The Twelve Days of Christmas
Which of these things are made of clay/terracotta? (Terracotta comes from the Italian for cooked earth).
A frieze on Reading Town Hall showing Shakespeare, Burns, Chaucer and Homer
The cylinders which are part of the Equinox sculpture
An 'air brick' in Town Hall Square Reading
Where would the last post be if you put the posts in a line going South at points in the Fibonacci series? 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,...99194853094755497 - this last number is the metres you will have travelled to put in the last post
In Canada somewhere North East of Quebec City.
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, roughly South East of Papual New Guinea
Somewhere South East of New Zealand