BTW Sandpile — Self-Organized Criticality

Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile avalanche dynamics with power-law statistics

Controls

Observables

Total grains
Active sites
Avalanche size
Total avalanches
Max ever
Drops

Theory

The BTW model: add grains to sites; if a site has ≥4 grains, it topples — sending 1 grain to each neighbor. Boundary grains are lost. Avalanche sizes follow a power law: P(s) ~ s^{−τ}, τ ≈ 1.2 in 2D. The system self-organizes to criticality without tuning any parameter.