The Spiral Jetty & the Spiral of Theodorus
- Author:
- Jennifer Silverman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April, 1970 that is considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also titled Spiral Jetty. Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks and water, Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake. The water level of the lake varies with precipitation in the mountains surrounding the area, revealing the jetty in times of drought and submerging it during times of normal precipitation. Originally black basalt rock against ruddy water, Spiral Jetty is now largely white against pink due to salt encrustation.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In geometry, the spiral of Theodorus (also called square root spiral, Einstein spiral or Pythagorean spiral)[1] is a spiral composed of contiguous right triangles. It was first constructed by Theodorus of Cyrene.The spiral is started with an isosceles right triangle, with each leg having unit length. Another right triangle is formed, an automedian right triangle with one leg being the hypotenuse of the prior triangle (with length √2) and the other leg having length of 1; the length of the hypotenuse of this second triangle is √3. The process then repeats; the nth triangle in the sequence is a right triangle with side lengths √n and 1, and with hypotenuse √(n + 1).