One Just Life * The Game of Life# The
Game of
Life (or simply
Life) is not a game in the conventional sense. There are no players, and no winning or losing. Once the "pieces" are placed in the starting position, the rules determine everything that happens later. Nevertheless,
Life is full of surprises! In most cases, it is impossible to look at a starting position (or pattern) and see what will happen in the future. The only way to find out is to follow the rules of the game.
# Play Life Now!...
# Rules of the Game of Life-
Life is played on a grid of square cells--like a chess board but extending infinitely in every direction. A cell can be live or dead. A live cell is shown by putting a marker on its square. A dead cell is shown by leaving the square empty. Each cell in the grid has a neighborhood consisting of the eight cells in every direction including diagonals.
- To apply one step of the rules, we count the number of live neighbors for each cell. What happens next depends on this number.
* A dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell (birth).
* A live cell with two or three live neighbors stays alive (survival).
* In all other cases, a cell dies or remains dead (overcrowding or loneliness).
Note: The number of live neighbours is always based on the cells before the rule was applied. In other words, we must first find all of the cells that change before changing any of them. Sounds like a job for a computer!
** One Just Life:* Dr. John Conway
# John Conway is a Professor of Finite Mathematics at Princeton University.
# He invented the
Game of Life in 1970. He chose 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.
#
Life is just one example of a cellular automaton, which is any system in which rules are applied to cells and their neighbors in a regular grid.
# There has been much recent interest in cellular automata, a field of mathematical research.
Life is one of the simplest cellular automata to have been studied, but many others have been invented, often to simulate systems in the real world.
# In addition to the original rules,
Life can be played on other kinds of grids with more complex patterns. There are rules for playing on hexagons arranged in a honeycomb pattern, and games where cells can have more than two states (imagine live cells with different colors).
#
Life is probably the most often programmed computer game in existence. There are many different variations and information on the web.
One Life Can Make a Difference ... You May Play Dr. John Conway's Game of Life!- Paul Callahan -----------
Visit:
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html-----------
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