# cellular automaton
A cellular automaton is a grid of simple cells that update together, step by step, from local rules alone — yet the results range from crawling insects to frozen crystals. Filtering by this tag gathers the site's rule-based grid simulations in one place: watch a single ant carve an unpredictable path across a lattice in Langton's Ant, see gridlock ripple backward through NaSch Traffic Model and Traffic Jams (NaSch), grow a city block by block in City Growth CA, or spread flame cell-to-cell in Forest Fire Spread and Fire & Smoke. Chemistry gets its own automaton too, in the swirling Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction. If you're curious how complex, lifelike behaviour can emerge from nothing but a grid and a handful of rules, this is the tag to browse.
Found: 11 simulations · 0 articles
🧪 Simulations (11)
Simulations in this topic include Sand Automaton, NaSch Traffic Model, City Growth CA, Magic Sand & Smoke, Fire & Smoke and Langton's Ant.
🔎 Facts
• 11 simulations use grid-based, rule-driven cellular automata — no articles are tagged here yet.
• Two of them, NaSch Traffic Model and Traffic Jams (NaSch), simulate the same Nagel-Schreckenberg traffic rule from different angles.
• Langton's Ant is the classic minimal example: one ant, two colours, one turning rule, endless emergent paths.
• Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction is the odd one out — a chemical oscillator modelled as a cellular automaton rather than a physical grid like sand or fire.
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