Patterns

Can you feel me. I am the steady thump-thump-thump of your own heartbeat. I am the happy bounce, bounce, bounce of a ball on the sidewalk. Have you ever looked closely at the world around you. I am the neat stripes on your favorite shirt, the lovely petals that circle the center of a flower, and the perfect squares of tile on the kitchen floor. I am there when you do the same things every day, like brushing your teeth in the morning and again at night. I am in the way the seasons march one after the other, from chilly winter to blooming spring, then to warm summer and colorful fall, only to start all over again. I am the secret rule that makes the world feel organized and predictable, helping you know what might happen next. You might not have known my name, but you have known me your whole life. I am Patterns.

Long, long ago, even before people wrote down their stories, they knew me. Early humans, as far back as 40,000 BCE, saw me in the paw prints of animals they hunted and in the glowing phases of the moon as it changed in the night sky. They painted me on the walls of their caves: rows of mighty bison and repeating stencils of their own hands. Thousands of years later, in a sunny land called Ancient Egypt, around 3000 BCE, people used me to build incredible things. They followed my geometric rules to make the sides of the Great Pyramids slope just right. They decorated their grand temples with repeating symbols called hieroglyphs, telling their stories over and over again on the walls. In Ancient Greece, clever thinkers began to study me with numbers. A man named Pythagoras, who lived around 500 BCE, discovered me in the beautiful sounds of music, and he believed I was the secret code for the entire universe. Not long after, another brilliant mind named Euclid wrote a whole book about my shapes around 300 BCE, a book so important that people still study his ideas today.

But I’m not just for math and building great monuments. I love to make the world a more beautiful place. During a time called the Islamic Golden Age, which started around the 8th century CE, artists used me to create some of the most breathtaking designs the world has ever seen. They filled the walls and domes of mosques and palaces with amazing tiles. These tiles had intricate, repeating geometric shapes that could weave and flow together forever, making it seem like you were looking into infinity. Later, in Europe, during a creative burst called the Renaissance, an amazing artist and inventor named Leonardo da Vinci saw me everywhere he looked. Around the year 1500, he studied the way my branches grow on a tree, the swirl of water in a river, and the perfect proportions of the human body. He knew that understanding me was the key to creating true-to-life and beautiful art. And of course, I am the heart of music. I am the catchy chorus in a song that you love to sing along to and the steady beat that makes you want to get up and dance.

Today, you can find me helping people understand the biggest and smallest secrets of the world. In 1953, scientists finally saw one of my most famous and important shapes: the twisting ladder of DNA. That's the tiny instruction manual hidden inside every living thing, and it's one of my most complicated and beautiful forms. A brilliant man named Alan Turing, in the middle of the 20th century, realized how my repeating rules could help machines “think.” His ideas led to the computers, smartphones, and video games you use every single day. Every time you play a game, a program is following my repeating instructions to make the characters move and the story unfold. I help meteorologists predict the weather by spotting my shapes in swirling clouds and gusts of wind. I am in the black-and-white lines of a barcode that gets scanned at the grocery store and the schedule that tells you when the school bus will arrive. I am always here, an endless puzzle waiting to be discovered. So look closely at the world around you, and you’ll find clues that help you understand everything a little bit better. What new patterns will you discover today.