Simulations

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

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.

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

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

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

Simple lens simulation by MinuteLabs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Simple light color mixing simulation, by Alex Larioza.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Electromagnetic wave simulation. Created by Falstad.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.