“There’s some humbling news from the chemical world for anyone who has ever found themselves lost in a garden maze. A simple droplet of organic solvent can find its way through a complicated labyrinth with nothing more to go on than a slight pH difference.
Bartosz Grzybowski’s team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, used a common polymer to fashion a two-dimensional labyrinth some 2 centimetres on each side. They then flooded the maze with strongly alkaline potassium hydroxide solution, before placing a hydrochloric acid-soaked chunk of gel at the maze exit.
After about 40 seconds they placed a droplet of mineral oil containing hexyldecanoic acid at the maze entrance. The oil, which cannot mix with the potassium hydroxide solution, sits on the surface. But it remains still only for a matter of seconds – it soon begins tearing around the maze at speeds of up to 10 millimetres per second, sniffing out the shortest path to the acid-soaked gel, and solving the maze in the process.
“In the movie files you can see the droplet makes decisions,” says Grzybowski. “It goes left along the wrong path, decides there’s something fishy with that and so it reverses. It looks almost alive.”"
Read more at New Scientist
And I had to code a maze solver for college….
If I only knew it could be done this simple
I am now thinking of David Bowie in silver tights (Labyrinth). Many thanks clever droplet.
Well it is a solution
“In the movie files you can see the droplet makes decisions,” says Grzybowski. “It goes left along the wrong path, decides there’s something fishy with that and so it reverses. It looks almost alive.”” Mad! What a find though and how fast does it work! I hope this makes a huge difference to the treatment of cancers very soon.
Big Dave says: Well it is a solution… Very funny, Dave!
Science makes no sense what so ever to me, but that is cool.
Nice try, but solving a maze when there is a continuous gradient between oneself and the exit, is very different to solving one without such information, as a rat or a human might do. So the apparent intelligence is down to the set-up not the droplet.
I’m sure there’s the makings of a good trick in that though…
I believe it is called chemotaxis and is used by bacteria to find each other and to find food. (And by sperm). Any gradient (pressure, Ph, temperature) can be a guide or motivator to action. The droplet is not making decisions – however, our own decision making processes at the neuron level are similar, especially regarding neurochemicals and gradients, so maybe there is a parallel…
Wait for a pharmaceutical company patent this then end of mazes for you and me.