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My son (13) is extremely mathematically adept, and current research on cellular automata generally and Life specifically is one of his passions. When the final
by Dove 3y ago
My son (13) is extremely mathematically adept, and current research on cellular automata generally and Life specifically is one of his passions. When the final pattern was discovered earlier this year, he was extremely excited about it, and we all wanted to celebrate. So he put together on graph paper what he felt were the smallest/most iconic/best designs for each period, and I transferred those designs into a Teepublic appropriate digital format (using my obvious "Engineer Faking Things" designer skills. LOL.)
We then went wild buying shirts for the family, a sticker (stuck currently on the water filter in the living room), a mug which was supposed to be mine but which my son guards as a precious possession, and a giant wall tapestry to hang in my son's room. I actually wasn't sure all of those were going to come out, but even on the sticker, you can make out the individual cells in the more complex designs. Anyway - we enjoy these things on a daily basis.
We're kinda a bunch of math geeks. My husband and I both have masters degrees in the field, and our son, I guess, is a demonstration of what you can accomplish with selective breeding. ;) We have a lot of mathematical curiosities around the house, most of them homemade - penrose and hat tile fridge magnets, klein bottles, constant width solids, representations of projective tuning space. You know, the usual.
Other enthusiasts in the (very niche) space enjoy seeing the graphic. Since the time of creation, math has advanced, with these no longer being the smallest or best examples of some of these loops. This is exciting for all of us - the advance of mathematics is usually not this accessible. :)
- ipnon 3y agoYou are a lucky parent!
- Dove 3y agoThank you! We think so! This kid's scratch page is wild - https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ https://scratch.mit.edu/users/noonagon/ One of my favorite joint projects with him was a python implementation of Game of Life in which individual cells have velocities, and will crash into and react to each other. He just came up to me yesterday proposing a refinement to the physics. I oughta put that one up on Github. Good times. :)
- bozhark 3y agoMaybe you should make more. Kids. Because this is amazing
- lotharbot 3y agoWe (I am Dove's husband) have 2 other children. The 7 year old builds electric circuits (takes after his grandpa who worked for NASA and HP before becoming a pastor), and the 2 year old mostly makes engine noises while driving his monster trucks around the living room.
- Dove 3y agoThe seven year old can make an electric motor out of spare parts (batteries, magnets, wires), and routinely makes electromechanical Minecraft contraptions that I don't comprehend. We just hope they choose to use their powers for good.
- Jerrrry 3y agoMy 7 y.o. can explain a motor but we haven't tried building one, I was eyeing him sets online and was between a few. I built him a loop in MineCraft redstone to power his randomly-timed spooky lights in his "the backrooms" (SCP), but I don't know how to use the newer redstone stuff and haven't found a (educational) use-case to built him anything with the redstone torch/NOT logic gate etc.
- Dove 3y agoMine started with homopolar motors! They're fun and easy and great kid-level physics and engineering. I can also recommend Snap Circuits for Christmas. :)
- nathan_douglas 3y agoMy thirteen-year-old got tangled up in his dress shirt the other day.
- hrnnnnnn 3y agoHow did he feel about the recent discovery of the aperiodic monotile?
- Dove 3y agoWe have penrose tiles on the fridge that I 3d printed years ago and glued magnets into. He begged and begged and begged me to make similar hat tiles. There were two problems - the 3d printer was currently broken, and work had slammed me so hard that I had no time for side projects. Finally I found an afternoon and we made about 20 hat tiles together out of vinyl and magnet strips. They currently live on our fridge. Of course then they promptly went and discovered spectre tiles. I have since fixed my 3d printer. And it occurs to me that that does open up a rather obvious option for a Christmas present.
- dekhn 3y agoI've found laser cutters to be more practical than 3d printers for tiles. I made a jigsaw puzzle using spectre, and managed to confuse a bunch of coworkers.
- isoprophlex 3y agoI got 144 wooden spectre tiles from a laser cutter shop to play with. It's surprisingly difficult (for me, without any mathematical ability) to make a proper tiling beyond ~ 30 tiles. I was never able to densely tile the plane with all 144... thus shattering my hopes of getting these in ceramics and tile a floor with them.
- dexwiz 3y agoPenrose tilings have similar issues. You can’t just combine them any possible way. There only a few valid vertex arrangements (tile positions around a point) to result in infinite aperiodic tiling. If you mess up, the resulting overlap can happen pretty far away.
- isoprophlex 3y ago
- insulanus 3y agoGet a second mug printed from the same printer, and hide it safely away, in case the original ever breaks, and they are out of business.
- nnnnnnnnnnnnn 3y agoIf it breaks, that might be a good opportunity to practice impermanence.
- wholinator2 3y agoWell sure, but i imagine you could get the impermanence lesson, and the mug next Christmas.
- the_d3f4ult 3y agoI love this. Sounds like your kids are lucky to have such supportive parents. I’d love to share that kind of thing with my son. He’s only 2 though so who knows what he’ll be into.
- larodi 3y agoLove this. This is art and STEM and love.
- taway_6PplYu5 3y agoIf you can get him into building eurorack synthesizers, he can start turning some of this math into music. This module, for example https://www.nonlinearcircuits.com/modules/p/cellular-automata https://www.nonlinearcircuits.com/modules/p/cellular-automat... uses networks of XOR gates to create "is a 16 cell gate and pattern generator using cellular automata rules 90 & 150". Blinky lights in a grid that steps with those rules and can steer other modules. I love mine. The designer has many other wild designs based on chaotic dynamics and many other non-linear mathematical concepts. The name is kind of a giveaway.