Open Physics Sims, a shared library for teaching

Simulations you can read.

Interactive physics for the classroom, each one a single file with the model written out in plain code. Nothing to install, no accounts, nothing loaded from anyone else's server. Open it, hand it to students, or download it and keep it.

What this is

A library of interactive simulations for introductory and intermediate physics, built for teaching. Several replace the Java simulations that no longer run in a browser; others cover topics that never had a good simulation.

Each simulation is one self-contained HTML file. The physics is in a few clearly named functions near the top of the script, so you can check the model, change a constant, or turn it into a different problem.

Use it, share it, improve it

Use any of these in a lesson, a course site, or a learning management system. Link to a simulation directly, or download the file and host it yourself; it keeps working without this site.

To report a problem or contribute a simulation, go to the repository on GitHub. A new simulation is one file in sims/ and one entry in sims.js.

Good simulations elsewhere

Some topics are already done well by others: Ray Optics Simulation for geometric optics, myPhysicsLab for mechanics with the equations shown, EMANIM for polarization and electromagnetic waves, and of course PhET. This library aims to fill the gaps around them, not to redo them.