From heat conduction and convection to Carnot engines and phase transitions — explore the fundamental laws governing energy and entropy through interactive models.
Each simulation runs fully in the browser — no server, no installation
Theory and mathematics behind thermodynamic simulations
Heat, entropy, phase transitions, and statistical mechanics — explored
Thermodynamics simulations connect the macroscopic behaviour of matter — temperature, pressure, entropy — to the microscopic motion of individual particles. Ideal gas simulations place hundreds of elastic hard spheres in a box and compute temperature from kinetic energy, verifying the Maxwell–Boltzmann velocity distribution in real time. The Ising model simulates ferromagnetic phase transitions with local spin flips, producing spontaneous magnetisation below the Curie temperature.
Heat conduction, diffusion, and phase-change simulations model the partial differential equations of thermodynamics on a finite-difference grid. By adjusting particle density, temperature, or external field strength you directly observe first- and second-law behaviour: entropy increasing toward equilibrium, energy spreading from hot to cold, and order parameters changing at phase boundaries. These are the same computational methods used in materials science and thermal engineering.
Thermodynamics is the science of energy, entropy, and the direction of spontaneous change. Its four laws govern every heat engine, refrigerator, chemical reaction, and living cell. Statistical mechanics — connecting microscopic particle dynamics to macroscopic thermodynamic quantities — is one of the great intellectual achievements of the 19th century, developed by Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Maxwell. These simulations make the statistical origin of thermodynamic laws directly observable.
Topics and algorithms you'll explore in this category
5 questions — entropy, Carnot, and kinetic theory
Common questions about this simulation category