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Kam Bielawski

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The OG model, the less intuitive and less approachable model than the sandpile model, was a lattice of springs with a pendulum at every vertex. Choose a random pendulum in the lattice to fully wind around its vertex a single time; this is the unit of energy going into the system. By winding a pendulum around once, it puts extra tension in the springs it is connected to. Each spring has a critical point where it cannot be wound more and it unwinds, releasing energy into the other springs it is attached to. Depending on whether or not those springs can tolerate the extra energy, they either take on the energy themselves or they also unwind, propagating the energy dispersal to their neighbors, and the local dynamics repeat in a cascade. "Chain reactions" or "avalanches" can occur, where winding a single pendulum once can set off a huge dispersal of energy throughout the system. The point here is, by injecting tiny bits of energy randomly throughout this relatively simple system (by windin

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