Wave 14 is done. Three deep-dive posts shipped across September and October 2028, covering the physics of musical instruments, the four laws of thermodynamics, and the exotic world of plasma physics. In this devlog we look at what was built, review platform statistics as we approach the 350-simulation mark, and preview what Wave 15 will bring.
Three posts shipped this wave, spanning physical acoustics, classical thermodynamics and plasma physics — topics that share a common thread: collective behaviour that emerges from microscopic rules.
Standing waves in pipes, Chladni figure eigenfrequencies, room-mode theory, Sabine/Eyring RT60, von Békésy cochlear mechanics and QRD diffuser design. Six sections, five linked simulations. Published Sep 2, 2028.
The four laws, Clausius-to-Boltzmann entropy, Carnot efficiency, Maxwell-Boltzmann speed distribution, Maxwell's Demon and Landauer's principle, and Ising-model universality at phase transitions. Six sections, five linked simulations. Published Sep 16, 2028.
Debye shielding, cyclotron motion and guiding-centre drifts, aurora formation, Lawson criterion for tokamak fusion, ideal MHD and Alfvén waves. Five sections, four linked simulations. Published Oct 7, 2028.
Each post follows the same structure developed across Waves 10–13: a LaTeX-rendered math block per major topic, a shaded physics-insight callout, and at least one direct link to a live simulation on the platform. Section count settled at five to six topics per post — enough depth without overwhelming a single reading session.
With Wave 14 complete, the platform stands at approximately 345 interactive simulations spread across 75 subject-matter categories. The milestones that bracket this wave:
"350 simulations" is closing in. When the platform launched in 2023 the target was 100 — a number that felt ambitious. Each milestone revision turns out to be underestimates. The ceiling is the breadth of science itself.
The largest category expansions this year were in topology (Möbius strip, Klein bottle, trefoil knot, Enneper minimal surface, Hopf fibration, hyperbolic tiling), ecology & population dynamics (food-web builder, trophic-cascade model, biological pump), and plasma physics (Debye shielding, aurora, plasma oscillations, nuclear fusion).
The simulations that attracted the most external links and classroom
citations this year were carnot-cycle,
navier-stokes, double-pendulum, and
lorentz-attractor — unsurprising, as these appear in the
largest number of undergraduate syllabi.
Core physics disciplines (mechanics, optics, electromagnetism, quantum, thermodynamics basics). Sporadic devlog cadence; each wave took 2–4 months.
Biology, chemistry, statistics, computer science added. Learning and Tips series formalised alongside Spotlight. Post length grew from ~6 to ~12 min reads as the math content deepened.
Cosmology, special relativity, general relativity, topology, materials science, ecology, acoustics, thermodynamics, plasma. Post structure stabilised: 5–6 topics, 1–2 LaTeX math boxes per topic, linked sim cards, prev/next navigation. Cadence: one wave ogni ~3 months.
Spotlight #28 turned out to be unusually sim-rich. The platform already
had
standing-waves, chladni,
room-modes, concert-hall-rt and
acoustic-diffuser — all directly relevant to the post
topics. The cochlear mechanics section required the most care:
Greenwood's tonotopic map and the von Békésy travelling-wave model are
rarely explained together, and getting the frequency-to-position
equation right ($x = A(10^{af} - k)$ inverted) demanded careful
checking.
Learning #24 tackled the subject that perhaps has the most confused popular treatments. The decision to trace entropy from Clausius's macroscopic inequality (1854) through Boltzmann's statistical definition (1877) to Shannon's information entropy (1948) and finally Landauer's physical limit (1961) gave the post a through-line that makes the concept feel earned rather than declared. Maxwell's Demon section is always the hardest to write concisely without hand-waving the Szilard engine argument.
Spotlight #29 leaned harder on quantitative results than most posts — the Debye length formula, the Larmor radius, the Lawson criterion ($n \tau_E T$), and the Alfvén speed all carry immediate physical intuition once written out. The decision to include ITER's target parameters ($n = 10^{20}$ m⁻³, $\tau_E = 3.2$ s, $T = 15$ keV) gave readers a concrete benchmark. Aurora B section benefited from the altitude-colour table (N₂⁺ at 100 km blue, O at 200 km red) — details that are widely cited but rarely sourced in the same place.
No major framework changes in Wave 14. The platform remains pure HTML/CSS/JS with Three.js r160 from CDN for 3-D simulations and Cannon-es for physics. No bundler, no build step — the zero-toolchain commitment is still the single biggest contributor to low maintenance overhead.
The service worker (sw.js) runs a stale-while-revalidate
strategy for simulation assets and a network-first strategy for blog
HTML. This means new blog posts appear immediately on fresh visits while
cached simulations continue to load offline after a first visit. We
haven't had to touch this logic since Wave 10.
sitemap.xml is updated manually — Wave 14's three blog
posts plus the three new devlog/spotlight entries have been appended.
The sitemap now lists 430+ URLs across simulations, blog posts, category
pages, and static pages.
Wave 15 is taking shape. The three candidate themes follow naturally from what Wave 14 left at the boundary of:
Qubits and the Bloch sphere, quantum gates, Bell inequalities, BB84 key exchange, Grover search and Shor's algorithm complexity.
Maxwell's equations in integral and differential form, Poynting vector, antenna radiation patterns, EM wave propagation, skin depth, and transmission-line theory.
Radiative forcing, feedback mechanisms (ice-albedo, water vapour, lapse rate), carbon-cycle fluxes, tipping elements, and atmospheric circulation cells.
Improved search, a simulation glossary, structured data (JSON-LD) for better SEO, and a categories taxonomy page redesign for Wave 15.
Quantum computing simulations already exist on the platform —
bb84, quantum-tunnelling,
bloch-sphere — so Spotlight #30 will have strong sim-card
support from day one. Electromagnetism likewise has
antenna-pattern, diffraction,
am-fm-modulation
and many others to draw from.
Each wave is now producing ~45–50 min of dense technical reading if you work through every post in full. Wave 14 alone covers acoustics, thermodynamics and plasma: three university-level subjects. The goal is always the same — make the mathematics navigable and the physics tangible through interactive simulations.
Fourteen waves in, the platform is still growing in every dimension: simulation count, blog depth, and subject-matter breadth. The approach of pairing every major conceptual section with a live interactive simulation — rather than static diagrams — remains the core editorial principle, and it is still the thing readers comment on most.
Wave 15 aims to be the deepest yet. If you have subject requests or notice something missing from a category, the contact page is always open.