Home▸Physics & Mechanics▸Zen Garden 2D: Sand Raking & Rock-Deflection Simulator

Zen Garden 2D: Sand Raking & Rock-Deflection Simulator

Top-down 2D companion to the 3D zen garden: drag to rake a grid-based sand height-field that piles up along each tooth's edges, tune tooth count, width and spacing, and place rocks that bend the raked lines into the concentric pattern real zen gardens use, modeled with potential flow around a cylinder.

Physics & Mechanics2DEasy60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted🌍 Earth ⇄ 3D version

This is the flat, top-down companion to the 3D zen garden simulator: sand is modeled as a grid of height values, and dragging the rake displaces that field tooth by tooth, carving a groove under each tooth while piling the displaced grains up along its edges. Tune the rake's teeth count, tooth width and spacing to change the pattern, then place rocks on the sand — the raked lines bend around them into the concentric, radial pattern real zen gardens use, driven by a potential-flow deflection field borrowed from ideal fluid flow around a cylinder.

⚙ Under the hood

2D top-down companion to the 3D zen garden: drag to rake a grid-based sand height-field that piles up along each tooth's edges as it displaces grains, tune the rake's tooth count, width and spacing, and place rocks that bend the raked lines into the concentric, radial pattern real zen gardens use, modeled with the same potential-flow deflection that describes fluid flow around a cylinder.

zen gardensand rakingheight fieldpotential flowrocks2D

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