Quick Help

• Cells are editable meaning that you can change the number of grains by clicking and typing.
• Set the number of rows and columns to set the grid size.
• Select the geometry to decide what happens on the boundary.
• Click Topple to topple every unstable cell.
• Click Reset to reset every cell to zero.

Explanation

This webpage provides a sandbox to play with sandpiles. Sandpiles were the 90th activity in Annie Perkins' Math Art Challenge.

In a sandpile, each cell has a certain number of grains of sand in it. A cell is unstable if it has more than three grains (more generally, at least as many grains as neighbours). An unstable cell can topple, whereupon it gives one grain to each of its neighbours.

This implementation is slightly different to how sandpiles work in the literature as I slightly misunderstood the instructions. In the literature, a "turn" consists of a single cell toppling. Although on a given turn there is a choice, in the long run then the order of choices doesn't matter.

In my version, however, on a given turn then every cell that is currently unstable topples. This can lead to a different type of long term behaviour. In particular, it makes sense to consider periodic long term behaviour.

With pretty much anything mathematical on a grid I find myself asking "What does this look like on a torus?", shortly followed by a Klein bottle and a projective plane. This determines what happens when cells on the edge topple. The options are:

• Soft: grains that fall off the edge disappear.
• Hard: grains that should fall off the edge stay in their original cell.
• Torus: grains that should fall off the edge disappear reappear on the opposite side.
• Klein: grains that should fall off the edge disappear reappear on the opposite side, but the top and bottom edges are reflected.
• Projective plane: grains that should fall off the edge disappear reappear on the opposite side, but both pairs of edges are reflected.

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