|   Tao's Cellular Material   |   Tao's Cellular Material   |   The Emergent Behaviour of the Material   | 
| Cell AttributesThe most important attributes maintained by each cell are itsmass,position,velocity,forceand lastlyvelocityMultiplier. Not
surprisingly these are used to keep track of the cell's state of motion
and the forces acting upon it. Theclass is unusual in
that it is seldom dealt with directly. However we will see that many
of Tao's other classes have attributes which are often accessed
and set via methodsThe  For example with a simple string-like instrument consisting of a single row of cells linked together with springs, damping small regions at either end of the string more highly than the rest of the cells causes the higher frequency vibrations to die away more quickly than the lower ones. This leads to a more natural string-like spectral decay in the sounds produced by the instrument, whereas a string with uniform damping exhibits no significant change in the distribution of spectral energy as the sound evolves. It is probably safe to say that all physically produced sounds exhibit some kind of spectral evolution, and as a general rule non-uniform damping always produces more interesting sounds from Tao instruments than uniform damping. The other main attributes that each cell maintains are pointers to its
neighbours  The final attribute is used to store other aspects of the cell's state,
such as whether it is locked or free to move. This attribute is called
 
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|   Tao's Cellular Material   |   Tao's Cellular Material   |   The Emergent Behaviour of the Material   | 
| ©1999,2000 Mark Pearson
m.pearson@ukonline.co.uk April 30, 2000 | ||