9x
Nine machines for looking at numbers.
Each plate below is a small piece of mathematics you can take hold of and turn. Drag the multiplier and watch a heart appear out of straight lines. Drop needles on a floor until π falls out. Give an ant two rules and wait ten thousand steps for it to build a road.
Nothing here is a video or a picture of a result. Every figure is computed in your browser, from the actual rule, while you watch — which means you can break it, and breaking it is the point. There is no tracking, no analytics, no cookies and no network requests after the page loads.
The nine plates
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Plate I
Multiply
Join every number on a circle to its multiple. The threads pile up into a cardioid.
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Plate II
Spiral
Wind the whole numbers into a square spiral and mark the primes. Diagonals appear.
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Plate III
Ant
Two rules on a grid. Ten thousand steps of chaos, and then, abruptly, a highway.
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Plate IV
Rule
Eight bits of rule, one row of cells, and a complete catalogue of what can happen.
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Plate V
Needle
Drop needles on a lined floor. Count the ones that cross a line. Out comes π.
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Plate VI
Hail
Halve it or triple it and add one. Everything falls to 1, and nobody knows why.
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Plate VII
Swing
Four pendulums, two axes, and a pen that runs down. Ratios you can see.
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Plate VIII
Seed
Turn 137.5° between seeds and nothing ever lines up. Turn 137.4° and everything does.
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Plate IX
Fold
Roll a die, jump halfway to that corner, mark the spot. Repeat. Order from noise.