The Numbers
The jump from 300 to 350 took roughly three months — faster than any previous 50-sim stretch. Most of that acceleration came from a clearer process: each new simulation now ships with a companion blog article, a categories page entry, and sitemap registration on the same day.
New Categories This Quarter
Optics Expansion — Highlights
The optics category was the largest single addition. Two simulations stood out in early testing:
- Total Internal Reflection — interactive fibre optic cross-section where you tune the cladding refractive index and watch the critical angle move. A laser pointer traces its path through multi-mode fibre with realistic numerical aperture.
- Water Caustics — GPU-accelerated caustic patterns computed on a height-mapped water surface. Real-time ripple perturbation shows how focusing intensity varies with wavefront curvature — the maths behind the bright lines at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Earth Sciences Expansion — Highlights
Earth sciences was the most-requested new category from community feedback over the past year. First wave of 10:
- Seismic Wave Propagation — P and S waves through layered crust models, reflection and refraction at boundaries, seismograph output.
- Mantle Convection — Rayleigh-Bénard convection cells in a viscous fluid; heat flow drives plate motion in simplified 2D.
- Volcanic Eruption — Two-phase flow (magma + pyroclasts), lava viscosity as a function of temperature and silica content.
- Polar Ice Dynamics — Ice sheet mass balance; albedo feedback loop; grounding line instability in real bathymetry cross-section.
Feedback welcome. All three new categories were shaped by community requests on the GitHub discussions page. If there is a topic you want to see simulated, open an issue — the most-upvoted requests directly inform the next devlog.
Infrastructure Improvements
Alongside new content, several platform improvements shipped:
- Client-side full-text search now covers all 350 simulation pages (detailed write-up in Devlog #24).
- All simulation pages now carry structured data (Schema.org) for richer Google search cards.
- PWA offline cache updated — 350 simulation index pages now pre-cached at install.
- HiDPI canvas rendering fixed across all WebGL simulations on retina displays.
What's Next
Q1 2027 roadmap: expand the Materials category to 20 sims (polymer dynamics, grain growth, dislocation motion), add a dedicated Quantum computing category (Bloch sphere, quantum gates, Grover's search), and reach 400 simulations before the site's anniversary.