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What is it?
Brain Maze is a wobbly loop that grows organically. It avoids touching itself as it grows. Growth Brain Maze demonstrates a technique for generating a fractal-like pattern via physics: it is a closed loop, consisting of a chain of nodes held together using simulated spring physics (only the connecting lines are shown). Each node experiences repulsive forces with all but its immediate neighbor nodes. These physial forces cause the loop to maintain its chain-like topology without overlapping. New points are born at random positions of the loop at a constant rate. As the loop grows in length, extra curls accumulate within the loop, causing it to look like a brain. The curls are like extra knowledge growing in a brain! While the brain is growing, you can manipulate it by selecting a piece of it and pulling it around. The Question At any time, you can "ask" the brain a question, which causes a question mark to appear somewhere on the outer-edges. In the middle of the brain you will see an exclamation mark (the answer!) The question is attracted to the answer, but repelled by the brain's looping walls. It meanders around experiencing these different forces. The question leaves behind a little trail, which it is repelled by. And so, it tends to not go where it just recently went. With the added force of "repulsion from past locations", the question can (sometimes) pull itself out of a dead-end. But it has a very short memory. The method by which the question tries to get to the answer is crude. Do you have ideas for better maze-following algorithm? If so, contact me :) jeffrey@ventrella.com Inside and Outside You can also pick up the question or the answer and move them anywhere on the brain, to see what happens. It is not always easy to tell in a mature brain what is the inside or the outside. But if the question is placed outside of the brain, you will see that it may reach a point close to the answer, but it can never actually get there. Such is the nature of knowledge! |