
Tony Crayfish Biophysics
Simple rules, remarkable forms
0 ratings
Free
Rating summary
About
Spots, spirals, membranes and organized tissues can emerge from surprisingly simple interactions.
Tony Crayfish Biophysics is an interactive science app for exploring how local processes help generate complex form, pattern and behavior. Begin with a sixteen-chapter animated tour, then investigate twelve laboratories with clear presets, meaningful controls and immediate visual feedback.
Explore:
- Turing patterns: reactions and diffusion turn small differences into spots and bands.
- Directed migration: chemical information guides cells that propel themselves.
- Phyllotaxis: growing buds and local inhibition produce spiral arrangements.
- Transforming forms: shared spatial rules change an entire shape.
- Polymerization: compatible binding sites build chains, sheets, rings and hollow tubes.
- Condensates and membranes: reversible interactions organize proteins, recruit soluble partners and assemble lipid bilayers.
- Bubbles in 3D: conserved volumes and surface tension organize interfaces.
- Cell sorting in 3D: local contact preferences organize different cell types.
- Branching in 3D: growing tips respond to nearby unmet demand.
- Networks: interacting switches find stable states or cycles; failures reveal structural robustness.
- Automata: simple deterministic rules generate complex patterns and prediction challenges.
- Canalization: regulatory feedback, noise and perturbations reveal the stability of cell states.
Explore on iPhone and iPad with touch controls and portrait or landscape layouts. Open the Controls panel to try another preset, pause or step through a process, rotate 3D views and save images to Photos. The guided tour keeps chapter navigation close at hand.
Scientific notes explain the terms, assumptions and limitations, with links to the researchers behind the ideas. Some illustrations are conceptual sketches; recorded molecular examples are clearly labeled and accompanied by adjustable live experiments.
The core experiments work offline. No account, ads, subscriptions or in-app purchases are required. Optional scientific links open in your browser.
“Order for free” describes organization emerging without a detailed global blueprint. Growth, signaling and active movement still require energy. These simplified teaching models illuminate general principles rather than reproduce complete living organisms.
By Tony Crayfish Productions.
Show more
What's New in Tony Crayfish Biophysics
Version 1.1
November 2, 2026
Explore Conway’s Game of Life in Automata Lab. Discover eleven starting patterns, including gliders, oscillators, the Gosper glider gun and random configurations. Draw or erase cells, advance one generation at a time, and adjust simulation speed, board size, starting density and boundary behavior. Experiment with custom birth and survival rules, inspect live population changes, and use Fit pattern to magnify small structures. The original one-dimensional cellular automata remain available.
More


