What information entered the process?
Labs / Computer Science
Game of Life
Every cell lives or dies by four tiny rules, yet whole machines crawl out of them. Click and drag to paint living cells, stamp a glider or the famous glider gun, then press play and watch the grid come alive. The edges wrap around, so nothing ever falls off the world.
Labs / Computer Science / Game of Life
Game of Life
Every cell lives or dies by four tiny rules, yet whole machines crawl out of them. Click and drag to paint living cells, stamp a glider or the famous glider gun, then press play and watch the grid come alive. The edges wrap around, so nothing ever falls off the world.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Computer science turns clear rules into reliable processes. This model lets you step through those rules and see how each decision changes the result.
Explore
Try the model
gen 0alive 0
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- A blinker just flips back and forth — but a glider keeps moving. What is the difference between a pattern that oscillates and one that travels?
- The glider gun fires a new glider forever. Where does all that structure come from if every cell only ever checks its 8 neighbours?
- Scribble a big random blob and let it run. Does it explode, settle into still shapes, or leave a few blinkers twitching?
- Send a glider straight into a solid block. Does it pass through, bounce, or get destroyed?
- Slow the speed down and step one generation at a time. Can you predict which cells will be born or die before you press Step?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Trace the process one step at a time. Name the rule used at each important step, then explain why the final result follows from those rules.
Check
Before you leave
Which rule changed it?
Why did the process produce this result?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.