- Are the forces in this simulation conservative, like gravity or spring forces?
- No. The forces are defined by an arbitrary matrix and are not derived from a potential energy function. This means energy is not conserved; it can be injected or dissipated by the force rules and the damping term. This is a deliberate simplification to explore a wider range of dynamical behaviors, unlike real-world closed physical systems.
- Why does the simulation use a torus (wrapping edges) instead of a box with walls?
- Toroidal boundaries eliminate edge effects, ensuring all particles have identical environmental conditions. This is common in computational physics to model bulk properties of infinite systems or to study intrinsic dynamics without boundary reflections, which can simplify the analysis of emergent patterns.
- What real-world systems does this abstract model relate to?
- While highly stylized, it shares conceptual links with models of flocking birds, cell sorting in biology, and phase separation in materials. It demonstrates how simple attraction/repulsion rules between different 'species' can lead to sorting, clustering, and pattern formation seen in complex systems.
- How does the damping term affect the physics?
- Damping multiplies velocity each step by a factor that is time-scaled so the slider matches the same decay at ~60 FPS regardless of frame rate. It removes kinetic energy continuously, preventing the non-conservative type forces from heating the system without bound, and lets patterns settle into stable dynamic structures rather than a chaotic gas.
- Can I edit the force matrix myself?
- Not cell-by-cell in this demo — the UI exposes three curated presets (cells, worms, foam), each with a fixed type×type matrix you can preview in the control panel. Switching presets, plus gain and interaction radius, is enough to see qualitatively different collective outcomes. Designing an arbitrary target pattern from a free matrix is an inverse problem and is intentionally out of scope here.