The lab · recovered from an old hard drive
2000s Flash physics, running again.
Long before any of this was a career, I was skipping class and teaching myself physics in Macromedia Flash. These are the original .swf files — pulled off an old hard drive and playing in the browser again through Ruffle, a Flash Player emulator compiled to WebAssembly. Click in and play with them. That was always the point.
2D ball physics · elasticity
Elastic Fireballs
July 6, 2004 · summer after freshman year
Two balls bound together by a distance-based force, each dragging a trail behind it. Twirl them around each other, or throw one and watch the pair roam the screen like a screensaver.
550 × 400 px · 120 fps · Flash Player 7 · 1.2 KB
Run the simulation →2D ball physics · gradient fire trails
Elastic Fireballs II
May 2, 2007 · senior year
The second iteration of Elastic Fireballs, built three years after the first. The trail is no longer a simple line — each segment is drawn with its own alpha and thickness, so it tapers and fades behind the ball like actual fire. It can also rewind time.
550 × 400 px · 50 fps · Flash Player 8 · 1.7 KB
Run the simulation →More experiments are still being recovered from the drive.