Game of Life: Explore Emergence
Play cellular automata games based on John Conway’s Game of Life and learn key principles about emergence at The Emergent Universe, an online interactive science museum.
The Game of Life: It’s all about interactions!
Play cellular automata games based on John Conway’s Game of Life and learn key principles about emergence at The Emergent Universe, an online interactive science museum.
Don’t the objects moving across the screen look alive?
In fact, these “objects” are created by individual squares on a fixed grid turning on (white) and off (black). The resultant “objects” move across the screen in the same way “the wave” moves through a sports stadium. The squares, like the people in the stadium, never move. They just turn on and off.
How do the squares know when to change color? [find out]
Explore rules:
There is no central control telling these squares what to do. Instead, their organized behavior emerges from a simple set of rules. Each square’s fate in the next iteration is determined by the current state of its 8 neighboring squares.
Seeds Rules:
- If a square was on, it will turn off.
- If a square was off, it will turn on only if exactly 2 of its neighbors were on.
Life Rules:
- If a square was on, it will turn off unless 2 or 3 of its neighbors were on.
- If a square was off, it will turn on only if exactly 3 of its neighbors were on.
Explore starting patterns:
- 4square
- 5square
- blinker
- glidergun
Simple interactions between neighboring squares – feedback – can generate very complex behaviors, creating apparent “objects” that live and die. These organized behaviors arise even though there is no leader.