Fireflies May 2014
Simulating the behavior of synchronizing fireflies.
An experiment inspired by the book Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life by Steven H. Strogatz.
Each cell flashes every few seconds. The cells influence each other in such a way that they will all eventually synchronize, as do some species of fireflies.
The cells charge following a logarithmic curve similar to that of a charging capacitor, firing upon reaching a threshold. This affects neighboring cells by a factor proportional to the inverse of their squared distance. The cells need not have identical individual frequencies to reach sychronization.
Links: GitHub • Visualization
