Glue and Springs: How to Assemble the Perfect Pattern
A handful of magnetic beads, when shaken, clump together. But add springs that push the beads apart at a distance, and the clumps break up into neat islands. Roughly this is how the particles in the new study behave: they attract at close range but repel from afar.
The authors simulated millions of variants of this 'glue with springs' on a computer.