Note: uses your current settings. Recommended small step number

This is a playground / sandbox for exploring all 256 elementary cellular automata.

A cellular automaton is a set of rules that determines how colored squares on a grid change with time. Among most studied ones, are the 256 elementary cellular automata: the most primitive rules.

The elementary cellular automata are generated based on the states of 3 squares: the previous square in that location, and the ones to the left and right of it. Each time step is drawn below the previous, so it is shown as the top left, top, and top right squares which affect the square below. There are 2^3 = 8 possible combinations of these three squares (being white or black), and 2^8 = 256 possible rules (each of the 8 combinations can result in a white or a black).

Each of the 8 possible previous conditions can be written in binary (1s and 0s) instead of black and white squares (white is "off" or 0, black is "on" or 1). With the 8 previous conditions laid out in order, with the resulting output (0 or 1) below, the binary for the rule can be converted to decimal for humans to easily read (for example, 00011110 is rule 30).

Base 10 (decimal) works by adding up powers of 10 (1, 10, 100, 1000). For example, the number "456" is 4 100s, 5 10s and 6 1s, or 4*100 + 5*10 + 6*1. Binary works the same way, but instead by adding powers of 2. For example, 100100 is 0 in the 1s and 2s place, 1 in the 4s place, 0 in the 8s and 16s place, and 1 in the 32s place, so it's 4+32, which is 36. Convert bases at rgbstudios.org/base-convert.

Cellular automata are most commonly used to model physical or biological systems. Perhaps the most famous cellular automaton is Conway's Game of Life which you can experiment with here. Cellular automata can even be used to generate maps or terrain in video games. See more applications on Wikipedia.

Right click it > "Copy image"

It allows you to change the behavior of the left-most and right-most squares (whether they wrap back around to the other side, or assume their non-existent neighbor is always white or always black.

Feel free to email me at contact@justingolden.me.