Simulations and Screensavers

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Cellular and agent simulations

Boids is the classic flocking model: each bird steers by three simple rules — keep apart, line up, stay together — and a flock emerges that nobody programmed. Conway's Game of Life and Langton's ant are cellular automata, grids where every cell follows a tiny rule and yet gliders, guns and highways appear. Falling sand lets you paint sand, water and wall and watch them settle. Reaction-diffusion is two chemicals feeding and eating each other into coral and fingerprint patterns.

Physics

The double pendulum is the simplest system that is genuinely chaotic: two hinged rods, and a starting angle a hair different gives a completely different path within seconds. The tool traces the tip so you can see the difference. Set the starting angle and the length ratio, then press Restart a few times with the same settings and watch how quickly the traces diverge; that divergence is what sensitivity to initial conditions looks like, and it is the reason long-range weather forecasts have a horizon.

Playing rather than watching

Several of these respond to the mouse. Falling sand does nothing until you pour something, reaction-diffusion lets you click to seed a new patch, and the fireworks launch a rocket wherever you click. The sliders take effect while the sketch is running, so the usual way to use a page is to press Play and then drag every slider once to see what it does.

Screensavers

The bouncing DVD logo, lava lamp, Matrix rain, fireworks and plasma are the things people put on a spare screen at a party or in an office. They take a colour or a speed setting and otherwise get out of the way. The music visualiser listens to your microphone and draws the spectrum, so it moves with whatever is playing in the room.

Fullscreen and privacy

Fullscreen uses the browser's own API, so Escape always brings you back. The microphone visualiser asks for permission through the browser prompt, processes audio on the device and never records or uploads anything. Every simulation runs entirely in the page; nothing is sent to a server.

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