https://editor.p5js.org/sl9964/full/-Q6kgfSC8

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What did you originally intend to create?

I want to make a lightning for my previous weather simulator

What resources and examples did you draw on to create your sketch? What was most helpful / least helpful from this week's materials?

https://www.stellarnet.us/spectroscopy-of-lightning-colors-and-composition/

What problems/discoveries did you encounter along the way?

It took a lot of tweaking with offsets and jitter to find a balance between "natural randomness" and the iconic ⚡️lightning shape.
had to limit depth carefully and scale the visual complexity with each generation because I can’t make the algorithm perfect.
Yes, you can and you should apply filter based on frameRates for animations
I kept having issues with disconnected lines when jittering segments because I forget to add the end point to the segements so each segments are not connected. </aside>

river, blood vessels, lightening bolts all have similar recursive patterns

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Lightning Bolts

Function: Path of least resistance for electrical discharge

Design Principle: Fastest route through variable resistance

Lightning is a stochastic fractal, forming rapidly through air. It doesn’t care about reusability or efficiency — it finds the most conductive paths toward the ground, often splitting and forking unpredictably.
It's shaped by electric fields and imperfections in air, so it branches chaotically, more like a DLA (diffusion-limited aggregation) model than a tree.

Fractal Growth Using diffusion-limited aggregation (Fig 1 in the original article)

⚡️You get “fractal-like” branching, but the pattern is random and dynamic, not designed for longevity or reuse.

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<aside> 🌿

Tree Roots & Blood Vessels

Function: Efficient distribution & absorption (of water, nutrients, oxygen, etc.)

Design Principle: Maximize surface area within a confined volume

Tree roots spread through soil to absorb water and nutrients. Their branching structure allows contact with more soil with minimal material cost.
Veins (and arteries) move blood throughout the body. They branch to reach every cell, and the smaller the branch (capillaries), the closer it gets to individual cells.
Both are optimized for minimizing energy loss over time — e.g., minimal resistance to flow, efficient diffusion.

🧠 These systems often follow space-filling fractals — like a 3D network that tries to fill a volume, not just spread across a flat plane.

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What is Lightning?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3gRYNt5m7E&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stellarnet.us%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY

Lightning is a rapid series of electrical discharges between the ground and a cloud or within clouds. It occurs typically during a thunderstorm but you can also find lightning during dust storms, forest fires, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and more. The immense current, which can be upwards of tens of thousands of amps, rapidly heats an air column just centimeters wide and up to several miles long to temperatures of 20-30,000 Celsius, several times that of the sun’s surface.

What do the different colors of Lightning signify?

When lightning strikes, different particles will scatter this light and cause the strike to appear as blue, pink, purple, white, or even a brownish tint. You’ll sometimes see more pinks or greens during snowstorms, as snowflakes tend to bend the light more. The colors can provide insight into what to expect during a thunderstorm:

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River Networks

Function: Drain water efficiently from a large area

Design Principle: Minimize energy and erosion over geological time

Rivers start as tiny tributaries that merge into bigger rivers. They try to follow paths of least resistance downhill, eroding land in a way that forms dendritic (tree-like) patterns.
The branching is often asymmetric, with larger rivers dominating flow.
River networks are shaped over millions of years by gravity, erosion, and sediment flow.

🌎 These follow optimal pathfinding over terrain, not maximizing contact but rather minimizing total energy expenditure.

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