Conway's Game of Life
"Life" was invented by the mathematician
John Conway in 1970. He choose the
rules carefully after trying many other possibilities, some of which caused the cells to die too fast and others which caused too many cells to be born. Life balances these tendencies, making it hard to tell whether a pattern will die out completely, form a stable population, or grow forever.
The rules are deceptively simple:
1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.
There are different patterns that have been identified as being stable or die out and even a few that will keep on growing.
Try these and then see if you can find any others. . . . .
Use the mouse to draw (click for a point, drag for a line), and press the start button. Use the stop button to stop it before trying again
