Simulations

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Electromagnetic wave simulation. 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.

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

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

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

Surprisingly powerful tool for creating circuits and seeing their behavior, created 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 blog post about waves, their shapes, adding them together, and harmonics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.