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arbortron
\är´•bər•trŏn\ from the Greek word arbor, 'tree'

The term arborton is used in experimental complex systems research for the tree-like structures formed when sets of electrically conducting particles are placed in an electrical field. To create an arbortron, the metallic particles are placed in a container coated with a thin layer of lubricant (in order to allow the particles to move in response to the electrical field). The resulting ramified network of connected particles is the abortron.

A typical arborton experimental set-up consists of several hundred small gauge, millimeter long copper wires placed in a petri dish filled with a 2mm deep layer of castor oil. A positive electrode in placed in the center of the dish and the wires are grouped around it. The negative electrode is attached to the metal side of the dish.

As voltage is applied (typically in the range of 1-25 kV), the wire particles re-align themselves under the influence of the electrical field. The wires start to attach themselves end-to-end to adjacent wires to form chains. Gradually, these chains grow outward towards the edge of the container. When a continuously connected chain of wires connects the positive electrode to the negative electrode (here the side of the petri dish) an electrical connection is established and the system undergoes a dramtic system change.

The term arbotron was coined by Alfred Hübler in 2011 . An arbotron is one possible physical implementation of a Physically Evolving Network (PEN), a concept first put forth in 1948 by Alan Turing. PENs model many features of information processing processes of biological neural systems and have been successfully applied to such fields as image processing, adaptive control and speech recognition.

Arbotrons seem to mirror some features of human neural systems, such as the brain's neural plasticity and how neurons behave as non-linear conductors with current thresholds. Because of this similarity, researchers have speculated that it might be possible to construct abortrons of millions of nano-particle sized particles whose behavior is controlled by electrodes.