Jun 27
A few plots of sandpile toppling. The typical rule is any cell with 4 or more grains topples by sending one to each neighbor. In general this kind of cellular automata is known as “chip firing” and is Abelian meaning unstable cells can be toppled in any order or even in parallel and still reach the same final state.
These plots are produced by dropping a million grains on the very center cell and having it all topple until stability. The cells are colored by how many grains of sand are on it. The different results come from changing the toppling rules; how many a cell can hold and how many go to each neighbor. Absolutely fascinating structure!