Simulations

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Simple light color mixing simulation, by Alex Larioza.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scroll up on this webpage and take yourself higher and higher, exploring “What’s up there?” with fun cartoony graphics. Created by neal.fun.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Simple lens simulation by MinuteLabs.

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

The math of how Thai fireflies time themselves. 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.