2D Shock Absorber Simulator (Damper + Spring)

This 2D simulator draws a shock absorber from the side: a coil spring and a piston-in-cylinder damper act in parallel on a mass sitting on a road-wheel platform. Triggering a bump displaces the mass upward and releases it, and the scene animates its return to rest exactly as the damped harmonic oscillator equation m·x″ + c·x′ + k·x = 0 predicts. Drag the spring stiffness k and damping coefficient c sliders — or pick a preset — to move between underdamped (bouncy, overshoots and oscillates), critically damped (returns fastest with no overshoot, the engineering ideal) and overdamped (slow, no oscillation) regimes, while the live readout tracks displacement, damping ratio ζ, oscillation count and settling time.