Glacier Ice Flow Simulator (2D)

This 2D side-view simulator shows how a glacier deforms and flows down a valley under its own weight — not by sliding as a solid block, but through slow viscous creep governed by Glen's flow law. Marker columns embedded in the ice bend downhill over time, moving fastest near the surface and almost not at all at the bed, because shear stress (and therefore strain rate) grows with depth. Adjust the ice thickness and valley slope to change the driving stress, and the ice temperature to change how soft or stiff the ice itself is — colder ice creeps far more slowly than ice near the melting point — while the live readout reports the real surface velocity and basal shear stress computed from the physics.