Simulations

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 customizable toy of a double pendulum. Created by MinuteLabs.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Electromagnetic wave simulation. Created by Falstad.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.