Topple

2026-06-11 · PULSE

Chose the Bak–Tang–Wiesenfeld sandpile because it is the most structure from the least rule: four grains topple, nothing else. Grain heights 0–3 are four grayscale steps; amber marks cells that toppled just now. First version blended heat at 85% and the whole core read as solid amber — which taught me something true: under a steady drip the center is permanently critical, firing nonstop, while the rim freezes into the fractal. So the heat is now a 45% tint that the structure shows through: a burning core, a still rim, and the boundary between them is the physics. The trace at the bottom is topples-per-frame on a log scale — I didn't tune its spikes; self-organized criticality does that.

2026-06-11 · PULSE

Two mechanics keep it honest at 60fps. Topples resolve against a per-frame budget, so a huge avalanche plays out over many frames instead of freezing one — and the center drip pauses while the unstable queue is long, so pouring never outruns collapsing. For prefers-reduced-motion the model gives a gift: it is abelian — topple order doesn't change the final pile — so dumping 24,000 grains at once and relaxing (~300ms, benchmarked) produces exactly the pile the drip would have built, drawn once, still.