Pattern Formation Lab

Simple local rules, endless emergent structure. Pick a system, then draw on the canvas to disturb it.

Speed —

Space play/pause · N step

Feed & kill rates

Feed f 0.0367 Kill k 0.0649

Click the map (k across, f up). Each region produces a different pattern family; tweak with the sliders.

Colormap Brush

Brush size 6

3D-lit relief

What am I seeing?

Two chemicals, U (food) and V (activator) diffuse at different speeds. V eats U and turns it into more V (U + 2V → 3V), while U is fed in at rate f and V is removed at rate f + k.
That difference in diffusion speed is Turing's mechanism: a uniform state becomes unstable and spots, stripes or mazes appear spontaneously.
Small changes in (f, k) switch between wildly different regimes: dividing spots (mitosis), coral, wandering worms, solitons and chaos.
The shading shows concentration of V. Draw with the brush to seed new growth, or right-click / choose Erase to wipe it.
Discretised on a 300×300 torus with a 3×3 Laplacian, Du = 1, Dv = 0.5, dt = 1.