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Abelian sandpile 1 tile

Mandala-like shapes with crisp fractal detail and bands of solid color — surprisingly symmetric and ornamental for something built from falling sand.

In this model, grains of sand pile up on a grid. Whenever a cell holds too many grains, it topples and passes one grain to each neighbor, which may trigger further toppling. Proposed by Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld in 1987 as an example of self-organized criticality, the final stable state forms these intricate patterns.

Every tile on tilejar starts as a crop of a larger image, which is then mirrored with a wallpaper symmetry (pmm, p4m or p6m) so it repeats without seams. Download it as a PNG or open its recipe in the generator.