The Computational Universe of Two-Dimensional Cellular Automata

Michael Round

USA Director: Theory of Constraints for Education

Our fascination with snowflakes usually ends after a brief period of marvel upon unfolding a folded-and-cut paper revealing beauty and symmetry. This lost opportunity on math and science education is made worse in that the wrong idea of the generation of a snowflake is communicated with such a “pedagogic” process.

This presentation will explore the 2D cellular automata computational universe from many perspectives: 5- and 9-neighbor rules, outer and totalistic considerations, and boundary conditions and the treatment of the grid null-space. Further, simple, random, and symmetric initial conditions will be explored.

[presentation materials]