The Q-toothpick Cellular Automaton
Elisabet Edvardsson and Eva Mossberg
In a toothpick-type cellular automaton, a shape is drawn, and then at each time-step copies of the same shape are attached at certain predetermined places. The resulting pattern exhibits unexpected growth properties. We investigate the fractal-like large-scale behavior of the Qtoothpick cellular automaton, which is built from quarter circles, with starting configurations consisting of an arbitrary number of quarter circles. In this paper, we prove that infinitely long barriers of quarter circles arise in the pattern, and divide it into non-interacting triangular parts. Furthermore, we show that the behavior of these triangular parts is described by the one-dimensional elementary cellular automaton rule 18 and is related to the Sierpinski triangle.
Keywords: Toothpick cellular automaton, Large-scale behavior, Fractal, Sierpinski triangle, Rule 18, Rule 90