physics simulation

Two Minute Papers covers a paper on speeding up fluid and smoke simulation with convolutional networks. It contrasts the approach with earlier regression forest methods.

AngeTheGreat describes building a physically realistic internal combustion engine simulator in C++, drawing on fluid dynamics, physics and chemistry. It generates procedural audio for engines such as a V8.

Sebastian Lague explores an ant-inspired algorithm and simulates ant and slime mold behavior, using compute shaders. Source code for both simulations is available.

A restored 1994 video of Karl Sims' research on evolved virtual creatures, where simulated block creatures are bred through artificial evolution to swim, walk, follow and compete. It is a landmark demonstration of genetic algorithms in physics simulation.

A Discovery Channel computer simulation of a large asteroid impact on Earth, showing the scale of the devastation. It sits in a broader context of early Earth impacts and the moon-forming collision.

A 2013 research demo of simulated bipedal creatures whose natural gaits are found by optimizing muscle-based controllers, with no motion capture or keyframe animation. It shows physics-based walking and running emerging from musculoskeletal models.

Physics Girl creator Dianna Cowern shares an update on her health, struggling with long COVID and ME/CFS. It includes documentary footage and links for supporting her recovery.

Veritasium explains how trees lift water from roots to the top of tall trunks, using transpiration pull and the negative pressure that liquid water can sustain. It explains why trees do not need pumps or valves.

PBS Space Time, together with It's Okay to be Smart and PBS Eons, asks how a universe drifting toward disorder produced something as complex as life. It presents the idea that the laws of physics, through thermodynamics, may actually favor the emergence of life.

Sean Carroll introduces his video series on the biggest ideas in physics, such as symmetry, space and matter, as informal discussions with follow-up Q&A videos. This is the short opening video of the series.

An animated visualization of basic quantum mechanics using a free particle, with simulations based on the actual equations. It covers waves, particles, and how measurement collapses the wavefunction.

Destin of Smarter Every Day films a cat falling in high-speed slow motion to show how cats right themselves in midair, and introduces the physics behind it.

Veritasium recounts a $10,000 bet with a UCLA physics professor over whether a vehicle can travel downwind faster than the wind. He presents the professor's reasoning and demonstrations, including one without aerodynamics.

Karl Sims's 1994 demonstration of evolved virtual creatures: block-bodied creatures whose bodies and controllers are evolved through selection, mutation and recombination to swim, walk and compete.

A ten-minute clip of Richard Feynman describing how mathematicians and physicists differ in their interests and customs. He argues physics rests on visualizing and applying math rather than pure abstraction.

PBS Space Time explains the Standard Model Lagrangian, the single equation encapsulating the particle physics theory, and visualizes what its terms mean.

MinutePhysics explains that computers store brightness nonlinearly, so blurring and blending colors in raw RGB gives wrong, dark results. It shows why mixed colors, such as in gradients, look off.

Researchers from the Artificial Life Lab Graz introduce the Primordial Particle System, where a simple motion law for self-propelled particles produces cell-like structures that self-reproduce and show life cycles.

A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.

minutephysics, in collaboration with the US Census Bureau, explains differential privacy and why the 2020 census adds noise to protect individuals' data. It walks through how statistics can leak private information.

Minutephysics compares how efficiently different processes convert mass to energy per E=mc^2, from fire and fission to fusion, antimatter and black holes, which can convert a large fraction of mass to energy.

Physics Girl shows a vortex phenomenon (a falaco soliton) that can be reproduced in a pool on a sunny day. Two vortices are created with plates and made visible with food coloring.

A health update from the Physics Girl channel explaining that Dianna Cowern has been seriously ill with long COVID and ME/CFS, and that new science videos are postponed.

Veritasium explains why bicycles are stable, arguing that gyroscopic effects are not the answer. The video shows countersteering and an experiment where riders blocked from steering the opposite way cannot turn.

Primer simulates green beard altruism, where individuals recognize and help others carrying a shared marker, and shows how imposters affect its evolution. It is an animated evolution simulation based on published papers.

A PBS Space Time episode explaining the Fermilab Muon g-2 results and why a discrepancy with the Standard Model prediction could point to new physics.

PBS Space Time explains how general relativity permits warp drive in principle and covers recent theoretical advances toward solving the negative energy problem.

The first part of a ShaderToy live-coding series that lays the groundwork for The Drive Home, a rainy night-traffic shader. It covers basic setup and builds toward rain and bokeh effects.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

Veritasium explains why the one-way speed of light has never been measured, only the round-trip speed, since measuring it requires synchronized clocks that assume the answer. It explores the implications for relativity.

A clip from the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine in which Richard Feynman explains heat as the jiggling of atoms and how we perceive it as hot and cold.

An animated simulation comparing single-winner voting methods such as plurality, instant runoff and STAR. Colored regions show which candidate wins as a randomized electorate shifts across a two-dimensional political space, building on Ka-Ping Yee's earlier diagrams.

Seeker's Focal Point short documentary on ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which make the most advanced chips. It shows how plasma-generated 13.5 nm light is used to push Moore's Law forward.

A CAD-based animation from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics showing how the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is configured and what its fusion research aims to achieve. It runs about 11 minutes.

A PBS Space Time episode asking what matter, mass, and energy really are, starting with inertial versus gravitational mass and what mass-energy equivalence means.

Sabine Hossenfelder asks whether complex numbers are just a convenient tool or necessary in physics. She discusses a recent paper arguing that quantum mechanics cannot be done with real numbers alone.

A PBS Space Time episode hosted by Gabe Perez-Giz on the nature of spacetime and whether space and time are fundamental. It builds up reference frames and causality in a short, dense format.

The first of an eight-part ScienceClic series building general relativity, covering worldlines, proper time and coordinate systems with animated visualizations.

Smarter Every Day uses high-speed and Schlieren photography to show how a whip crack is a supersonic shockwave formed at the tip. It references academic papers on whip physics.

A PBS Space Time episode explaining the holographic principle: the idea that our 3+1 dimensional universe may be described by information on a lower-dimensional boundary. It walks through black hole entropy and the AdS/CFT correspondence.