Simulations

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

Electromagnetic wave simulation. Created by Falstad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Simple lens simulation by MinuteLabs.

A simple gravity simulator for the web. Created by Hermann.

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

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.

A to-scale model of the solar system in a browser window. Created by Josh Worth.

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

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

Have you ever wanted to evolve mold? Here, you can evolve mold. Created by erytau.

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

Simple simulation: draw an iceberg, and see how it will float in the water. Inspired by the idea that icebergs are often drawn incorrectly. Made by joshdata.

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

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.

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

Very cool 3D astronomical simulations, running right in the browser. Created by Darrell Huffman.

Build tons of 2D physics simulations with this free resource. Easy to check out, tons of cool stuff you can do with it. Created by Dimitris Xanthopoulos.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

An evolving creature simulator where the creature are boxes stuck together into piles. Built by Evol Games.

Pixel based simulation of life, where each color represents a type of cell for the organism. Over time organisms evolve in their virtual environment. Created by Max Robinson.

Simple light color mixing simulation, by Alex Larioza.

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

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

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

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.

Web based oscilloscope, with a variety of settings to explore, among them the ability to use your microphone to input the wave pattern. Created by Neil Thapen.

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

Basically lets you recreate The Game of Life, but with emoji and any rules you’d like to put in. Created by Nicky Case.

Scrollable explorer where you can see what’s in the deep ocean, the deeper you go. By Neal.fun.

Evolution simulator where little creatures swim around and evolve. A deep amount of complexity. Created by Léo Caussan.