

If you're using Life32, then after installing, the students should navigate to the directory containing the initial patterns linked to above. Jason Summers has compiled a very interesting collection of life patterns that can be run with either Life32 or Golly, which can be downloaded here. There are also many Java implementations of The Game that can be run under in most modern web browsers, though they are usually slower. There is a brief description of how Golly achieves such amazing speed here. Another extraordinarily fast program that can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux is Golly, which uses hashing for truly amazing speedups.
RULES OF LIFE GAME DOWNLOAD
There are initial patterns that can be used only with Life32 that you can download here. You can download the Life32 program here.
RULES OF LIFE GAME SIMULATOR
Life32 is a full-featured and fast Game of Life simulator for Windows. The "acorn" is another example of a Methuselah that becomes predictable only after 5206 generations.Īlan Hensel compiled a fairly large list of other common patterns and names for them, available at /lifepage/picgloss/picgloss.html. The students should use the computer programs to view the evolution of this pattern and see how/where it becomes stable.

The class of patterns which start off small but take a very long time to become periodic and predictable are called Methuselahs. The F-pentomino stabilizes (meaning future iterations are easy to predict) after 1,103 iterations. In fact, it doesn't stabilize until generation 1103. A glider will keep on moving forever across the plane.Īnother pattern similar to the glider is called the "lightweight space ship." It too slowly and steadily moves across the grid.Įarly on (without the use of computers), Conway found that the F-pentomino (or R-pentomino) did not evolve into a stable pattern after a few iterations. The following pattern is called a "glider." The students should follow its evolution on the game board to see that the pattern repeats every 4 generations, but translated up and to the left one square. Here are some tetromino patterns (NOTE: The students can do maybe one or two of these on the game board and the rest on the computer): Some possible triomino patterns (and their evolution) to check: They should verify that any single living cell or any pair of living cells will die during the next iteration. Using the provided game board(s) and rules as outline above, the students can investigate the evolution of the simplest patterns.

The status of each cell changes each turn of the game (also called a generation) depending on the statuses of that cell's 8 neighbors. The Game of Life (an example of a cellular automaton) is played on an infinite two-dimensional rectangular grid of cells.
