MATHEMATICS 30

MATHEMATICS FACT

UTERUS

• According to a gynaecologist at the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, doctors can tell whether a uterus looks normal and healthy based on its relative dimensions – dimensions that approximate the golden ratio.
• Over a few months, Dr Verguts took ultrasounds of 5,000 women’s uteruses and compared the average ratio of a uterus’s length to its width among different age brackets. The data revealed a ratio that is about two at birth. This steadily decreases through a woman’s life until reaching 1.46 during old age.
• Dr Verguts discovered that, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, when women are at their most fertile, the ratio uterus length to width is 1.6. This is a very good approximation of the golden ratio.