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Chemistry & Materials

Diffusion reactions, Turing patterns and self-organisation in chemical systems. From Gray-Scott to morphogenesis — complexity from simplified equations.

8+ simulations WebGL · GLSL Reaction-Diffusion · Ping-Pong

Category Simulations

Chemical and material systems in real time

Self-organisation — systems without central control form complex structures through local interactions. Tiger spots, zebra stripes, coral mazes — all described by the shared mathematical framework of Turing reaction-diffusion.

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Ready ★★☆ Moderate
Reaction-Diffusion
Gray-Scott model: two substances A and B interact and diffuse on a grid. Tune f and k to grow spots, stripes, worms, spirals and coral patterns.
Canvas 2D Gray-Scott PDE Self-Organisation
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★☆☆ Beginner
Soap Bubbles
Surface tension dynamics: bubbles minimise area to form spheres. Watch clusters merge and split under pressure equilibrium laws.
Canvas 2D Surface Tension Pressure
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★★★ Advanced
SPH Fluid
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics: thousands of particles simulate incompressible liquid with Navier-Stokes pressure and viscosity.
WebGL SPH Navier-Stokes
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★★☆ Moderate
Fracture Mechanics
Click to crack brittle materials. Stress propagation through a lattice using bond-breaking thresholds — from hairline cracks to shattering.
Canvas 2D Fracture Lattice
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★☆☆ Beginner
Sand & Granular Matter
Cellular automaton of falling particles: sand, water, fire, stone. Granular flow, angle of repose, and avalanche dynamics.
Canvas 2D Cellular Automata Granular
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★★☆ Moderate New
Fire & Smoke
Cellular automaton with fire, smoke, ember, ash, wood, water and wall cells. Paint materials with the brush, set wind direction and watch combustion, smoke rise and embers scatter.
Cellular Automata Fire Canvas 2D
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★★★ Advanced New
Molecular Dynamics
2D Lennard-Jones MD with Velocity-Verlet integrator and Berendsen thermostat. Watch gas, liquid and solid phases emerge as you vary temperature and particle count. Live kinetic energy chart.
Lennard-Jones Thermostat Phase Transition
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★★ Intermediate New
Crystal Growth
3D Diffusion-Limited Aggregation: random-walk particles stick to a growing fractal crystal. Cubic, hexagonal and FCC lattices. Color by layer depth.
DLA Fractal InstancedMesh
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★★☆ Moderate New
pH Titration
Interactive acid-base titration curves. Choose strong or weak acid/base systems, adjust concentrations, add drops of titrant, and watch the beaker change colour at the equivalence point.
pH Titration Henderson-Hasselbalch Buffer Region
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★★☆ Moderate
Reaction–Diffusion
GPU-accelerated Gray–Scott reaction-diffusion system. Tunable feed and kill rates produce spots, stripes, labyrinthine mazes and self-replicating spots.
WebGL Gray–Scott GLSL
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★★★ Advanced
Ising Model
Metropolis-Hastings Monte Carlo simulation of the 2D Ising model. Watch phase transitions from ferromagnetic to paramagnetic order as temperature crosses the Curie point.
Canvas 2D Monte Carlo Thermodynamics
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Ready ★★☆ Moderate
Reaction Kinetics
Consecutive reactions A→B→C governed by the Arrhenius equation. Tune temperature and activation energies, toggle a catalyst and reversibility to see how rate constants shape the yield curves.
Arrhenius ODE Catalyst Activation Energy
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New ★★☆ Moderate
Belousov–Zhabotinsky Reaction
3-state excitable-medium cellular automaton (Greenberg–Hastings model). Spiral and target waves self-organise from random perturbations — click to plant a spiral seed.
Excitable Medium Cellular Automata Spiral Waves
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New ★★☆ Moderate
Turing Diffusion
Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion model spontaneously forms spots, stripes, mazes and coral patterns. Tune feed rate F and kill rate k to navigate Turing's 1952 morphogenesis landscape. Click to plant seeds.
Gray-Scott Reaction-Diffusion Morphogenesis

Key Concepts

The science behind the simulations

Reaction-Diffusion
PDE system where chemicals react locally and spread by diffusion. Turing (1952) showed this breaks symmetry to spontaneously generate stable spatial patterns like spots and stripes.
Surface Tension
Cohesive intermolecular forces pull liquid surfaces inward. Soap films obey Plateau's laws — meeting at 120° angles, minimising total area, causing pressure difference ΔP = 4γ/r in bubbles.
SPH & Viscosity
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics solves Navier-Stokes by interpolating field quantities over neighbouring particles via kernel functions. Viscosity dissipates kinetic energy into heat.
Fracture & Stress
Crack propagation follows Griffith's criterion: a crack grows when reducing surface energy exceeds elastic strain energy released. Stress concentration at crack tips drives brittle fracture.

Learning Resources

Articles and tutorials about the algorithms in this category

Article Reaction-Diffusion: Turing Patterns Gray-Scott system: reaction and diffusion equations. Parameters f, k. Ping-pong framebuffers. → Article Cellular Automata & Wolfram Rules One-dimensional and two-dimensional cellular automata. Classification of rules. Complexity from simple beginnings. →
All articles →

About Chemistry Simulations

Atoms, reactions, diffusion, and molecular dynamics — in the browser

Chemistry simulations model matter at the atomic and molecular level. Lennard-Jones molecular dynamics place particles in a periodic box and integrate Newton's equations under pair potentials, revealing gas, liquid, and solid states as you vary temperature. Reaction-diffusion systems simulate the Gray–Scott equations that underpin Turing pattern formation and the oscillating Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.

These simulations bridge physical chemistry and computational modelling. Adjusting temperature, density, or diffusion coefficients lets you observe phase transitions, concentration gradients, and self-organising chemical waves. The same Lennard-Jones potential is used in protein folding research; the same reaction-diffusion framework models morphogen gradients in developmental biology. Exploring them interactively is the fastest way to build chemical intuition.

Chemistry simulations bridge the gap between the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Molecular dynamics is used professionally to study protein folding, drug-receptor binding, and material fatigue at the atomic level. Reaction-diffusion models explain the formation of animal coat patterns, coral reef branching, and chemical oscillators like the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. These interactive models make quantum-level phenomena accessible without a chemistry laboratory.

Key Concepts

Topics and algorithms you'll explore in this category

Molecular DynamicsLennard-Jones potentials and verlet integration
Crystal GrowthNucleation and lattice formation kinetics
Reaction-DiffusionGray-Scott model for autocatalytic reactions
Lennard-Jones PotentialV(r) = ε[(σ/r)¹²-(σ/r)⁶]
Phase TransitionsMelting, crystallisation and order parameters
Brownian MotionStochastic thermal motion of particles

🧪 Test Your Chemistry Knowledge

5 questions — elements, reactions, bonds and more

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about this simulation category

How does the molecular dynamics simulation work?
Each atom exerts a Lennard-Jones force on its neighbours: repulsive at short range, attractive at intermediate range, zero at long range. Verlet integration advances positions and velocities each timestep. Temperature is controlled by rescaling velocities to maintain the desired kinetic energy.
What is crystal growth simulation?
The crystal growth simulation models nucleation and growth on a 2D lattice. Atoms attach to the growing solid phase according to a temperature-dependent probability derived from the Boltzmann factor. Faster cooling produces polycrystalline structures; slow cooling grows large single crystals.
How does the Reaction-Diffusion simulation create patterns?
The Gray-Scott model tracks two chemical species U and V. U feeds autocatalytic conversion to V (V + 2U → 3V) while V decays. Diffusion at different rates causes spatial instability, producing spots, stripes, and worm-like patterns depending on the feed and kill rate parameters.

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