PhysicStuff is an interactive physics education platform with 38 articles and 27 browser-based simulations across 11 subjects. It started as a WordPress blog and was rebuilt from scratch in Next.js to enable the interactive simulations that are at its core.
The idea is simple: physics is best understood by playing with it. Every major article is paired with a simulation that lets readers change parameters and immediately see the effect — no downloads, no installation, just the browser.
Simulations
The simulations range from classical mechanics (projectile motion, simple harmonic oscillator, Lissajous figures) to chaos theory (Lorenz attractor, double pendulum) to quantum mechanics (wave packets, potential wells) and mathematics (Fourier synthesis, Mandelbrot and Julia sets).
Three.js handles 3D visualisations such as the Lorenz attractor and orbital mechanics. Plotly.js handles 2D plots and interactive charts. All simulations run in real-time in the browser with no server-side computation.
Technical Approach
Articles are written in MDX, which lets the prose and the simulation component live in the same file. The simulation is just a React component imported directly into the article — no iframe, no embed code.
The site is statically exported with Next.js and deployed to Vercel. Every page is pre-rendered at build time, so it loads instantly. The simulation JavaScript is code-split per article, so readers only download the code for simulations they actually visit.