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Water Ripples (2D)

Top-down 2D water ripple simulator: drop stones on a still pool and watch circular wavefronts spread, superpose and interfere, driven by the same wave equation as the 3D version.

Everyday Physics2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This top-down 2D companion drives the same wave equation as the 3D GLSL shader version — circular wavefronts with amplitude decaying by distance and time, summed by superposition — but renders the heightfield directly as a 2D colour map instead of a lit 3D mesh. Click the pool to drop a stone, or use Rain mode to fill it with overlapping interference patterns.

⚙ Under the hood

2D Canvas heightfield renderer: h = amp·sin(kr − ωt) summed over up to 12 active ripple sources, with k = 2π/λ and amplitude decaying by exp(−damping·age)·exp(−0.12·distance).

water rippleswave interferencesuperpositiondampingcircular wavefronts

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install