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🎯 Liesegang Rings: Periodic Precipitation Lab

Simulate how a diffusing chemical reacts with a gel-bound partner to self-organize into discrete concentric rings instead of a single smooth band, driven by the Ostwald supersaturation-nucleation-depletion cycle.

Chemistry & Materials3DModerate60 FPS

The simulator demonstrates the Ostwald supersaturation-nucleation-depletion feedback loop in action: a reactant diffusing into a gel builds up concentration in a metastable zone past ordinary solubility, triggers a burst of nucleation only once a much higher threshold is crossed, and then locally depletes itself, forcing the next band to form farther out. It shows how diffusion rate, reactant concentrations, and the gap between solubility and nucleation thresholds together determine the number, spacing, and widening pattern of the resulting bands.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Set the initial concentration of the inner electrolyte held uniformly in the gel and the concentration of the outer electrolyte introduced at the source, then adjust the diffusion coefficient to control how quickly the reactant front advances. Tune the solubility and nucleation thresholds to widen or narrow the metastable zone, and press run to watch the front sweep across the domain, producing discrete precipitate bands. Use the time slider or playback controls to inspect how band positions and gap widths evolve, and compare runs with different parameter values to see how each control reshapes the spacing pattern.

💡 Did You Know?

Liesegang rings are not just a lab curiosity: geologists have identified strikingly similar concentric banding in agates and iron-oxide-stained sandstones, believed to form via the exact same diffusion-nucleation-depletion mechanism but playing out over thousands to millions of years as mineral-laden fluids crept slowly through porous rock instead of gelatin.

⚙ Under the hood

chemistryself-organizationdiffusionprecipitationpattern-formationnucleationphysical-chemistry

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install