Betel Nut and the Stars!

As a child growing up in a semi-urban, small town, where there used to be lot of betel nut plants, I was surprized to find some of the betel nut cultivation to consist completely of symmetrical arrangements of the trees. It was a worker in one of these fields, who for the first time showed me that that was done by tying rope as shown below, and then planting the samplings where the straight lines made by the intersection of the ropes create!

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It was my first lesson in symmetry. Later during my studies, I had to study molecular symmetry and often I remembered my first encounter with symmetry.

Then I noticed another kind of symmetrical arrangement recently. This was during a long car ride from the Grand Canyon to San Diego, where there was a sticker of the U.S. flag on one of the car windows, and I keenly noticed the 50 stars there. Somehow, it appeared to me that there was something wring with the arrangement of the stars. I watched it keenly and then found out that the stars were arranged the following way.

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(Please view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States)

It was just that my eyes wanted to see a completely symmetrical pattern and thought that there was something wrong with the arrangement in the flag.

To be written more....

Note: To see how the arrangement of the stars in the U.S. flag has often been kept symmetrical, with changes brought in with changing number of states, one may view the following link:

http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagpics.html