Simulations

Simple tool for exploring the night sky at different wavelengths of light. Built by Lowe, Simpson, and North.

Crawling stick figure creatures evolve before your eyes. Created by TestTubeGames.

Fly through the universe near the speed of light, and experience the relativistic effects of length contraction and time dilation. Can you make it to Andromeda in one raptor’s lifetime? Built by TestTubeGames.

Have you ever wanted to evolve mold? Here, you can evolve mold. Recently updated! Created by ery tau.

See a globe of earth, but back in history, millions of years ago. Watch the techtonic plates move, and see where in Pangaea your house was.

Some interesting simulations about how eyes work to see the world. Created by Ala’, Andrew, Jason, Peter, and Tanya.

Simple light color mixing simulation, by Alex Larioza.

Blog post about Entropy, full of interactive simulations. Written clearly and understandably, also with sheep. Created by Aatish Bhatia.

A simulation of the spacetime around a Schwarzschild black hole where you can fling astroids and light to your heart’s content. Created by TestTubeGames.

Fascinating simulation where you can add and move objects in 4 dimensions. On mobile or pc, and created by mtb design works.

Long blog post about the physics behind bicycles. Full of interactives, and very cleanly done. Covers an absurd amount of mechanics. Created by Bartosz Ciechanowski.

What is a day, actually? Part video, part simulation, all interesting. Created by Jasper Palfree.

Scroll down the page and explore what energies match what masses, according to the famous equation E=mc^2. Created by MinuteLabs.

Electromagnetic wave simulation. Created by Falstad.

Simulate solar eclipses, even on other planets and with other moons. Created by MinuteLabs.

An interactive blog post about waves, their shapes, adding them together, and harmonics.

A slick simulation of particles flying around a black hole. Created by Ricky Reusser.

Cool phone app that can turn your device into a physics sensor, measuring things like sound, acceleration, light, etc. Created by Vieyra Software.

A look at the quantum mechanics behind Bell’s Inequality, using a casino as an example. Built as a long blog post with many interactives along the way. Created by Adam Becker.

Evolving creature simulator where the creatures are basically 3D sets of boxes. Built by Evol Games.

An easy-to-use rocket simulator. See if you can build a ship that can make it to space, the moon, or further. Now see if you can do it safely. Free demo versions available on certain platforms.

A simulated swing, with some tools for exploring the physics behind pumping your legs. Created by TestTubeGames.

Turn your phone into a physics lab. Graph things like acceleration, pressure, and magnetic field. Very powerful stuff. Created by RWTH Aachen University.

The math of how Thai fireflies time themselves. Created by Nicky Case.

App that lets you explore a tesseract, built by Lunar Skydiving.

Basic and easy-to-use simulation for light curving around a black hole. Created by Thomas Müller.

Cool look at gravity of many, many bodies, calculated on a mesh. Looks neat, too. Created by Ricky Reusser.

Investigating molecules bouncing around in a piston in various states of matter. Good thermodynamics simulations by PhET.

Simple lens simulation by MinuteLabs.

A nice interactive look at three-body orbits that repeat. Created by Ricky Reusser.

Fun toy that lets you play with a Reaction Diffusion System, a simulation that easily makes interesting patterns and has a connection to how biological systems grow. Created by pmeila.

Surprisingly powerful tool for creating circuits and seeing their behavior, created by Falstad.

An explorable explanation of the orbits around a spinning black hole. Created by Dr. Leo Stein.

Particle simulation that is great for exploring thermodynamics, or Newtonian mechanics, gas laws, etc. Created by Dan Schroeder.

Fling planets and change physics in this gravity sandbox. Available in browser and for download. Created by TestTubeGames.

A beautiful simulation of a fluid that’s quite fun to play with. Mesmorizing… Built by Pavel Dobryakov.

Have you ever wanted to walk backward into a black hole? Fly through a wormhole? Now’s your chance in this relativistic simulation. Based on the setup in the movie Interstellar, and created by sirXemic.

An interactive video that lets you explore the math and patterns of virus structures. Created by Hamish Todd.

A simulation of falling sand and so much more, a surprising amount of physics built into this toy. Created by the R74n Collective.

A customizable toy of a double pendulum. Created by MinuteLabs.

Excellent web simulator for optics, with a wide range of lenses, mirrors, prisms, and other objects you can add. Created by Yi-Ting Tu.

Simulation for investigating waves and interference, with a bunch of customizable physics options. Created by Falstad.

An evolution simulator heavily based in biology, built by Revolutionary Game Studio.

Draw the bones and muscles for your stick-figure creatures, and evolve them into better racers. Built by Keiwando.

Downloadable space simulation that lets you smash planets together in a really cool way. Created by Giant Army.

An interactive explorable about the physics behind gears. Created by Bartosz Ciechanowski.

Particles bouncing around in a box, with lots of options for changing the setup. Includes thermodynamic quantities, too. Built by Falstad.

Easy-to-use simulator for modeling electric fields around point charges. Created by Ithaca College.

Investigate systems that interact, such as the predator-prey population dynamics and much, much more. Created by Nicky Case.

Fascinating simulator that gives you a lot of power to change the rules of the world, adding in various forces, rules, and objects. Can create some interesting things. Built by lisyarus.

An interactive book about geology and earth science, available for iPad and Mac. Created by Chaim Gingold.

Nice tool for easily creating and testing simple circuits, built by PhET.