Interactive physics simulations I built while teaching my daughter
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I started teaching my daughter physics by showing her how things actually work - plucking guitar strings to explain vibration, mixing paints to understand light, dropping objects to see gravity in action.She learned so much faster through hands-on exploration than through books or videos. That's when I realized: what if I could recreate these physical experiments as interactive simulations?Lumen is the result - an interactive physics playground covering sound, light, motion, life, and mechanics. Each module lets you manipulate variables in real-time and see/hear the results immediately.Try it: https://www.projectlumen.app/
HN · launched Jan 19, 2026 · 87 upvotes (top 12%) · 0 views
Niche: physics and engineering simulation software · 104 launches, 8 in the last 7 days ▲ +14% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Education
- Dev tools
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 104 launches in physics and engineering simulation software →
Could you build this?
Yes Educational physics widgets in React using canvas or framer-motion (springs, pendulums, wave simulations) are standard textbook algorithms readily generated by AI coding assistants.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: PhET simulations (phet.colorado.edu), Typing Club, Keybr, Monkeytype
Concerns raised: Animations too fast, hard to follow, Performance issues and rendering errors in Firefox, Physics not accurate (control inversion in Sound/Biology, airstream deflection in wing simulation), Requires Google account login by default, Text too small and hard to read
Feature requests: Slow down animations, Persist page selection in URL query parameters for direct linking, Add context/descriptions for each simulation, Open source the code
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 151 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #30 of 152 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 72 days after the earliest competitor.
- PlayPuzzle Science · ph · 2026-11-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- A gravity simulator where forces propagate at the speed of light · hn · 2026-09-03 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Physics Quiz Game · ph · 2026-10-28 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Nina's Little Universe · ph · 2026-09-18 · 55 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- every-joule-lesson1 · github · 2026-10-22 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Gravity · hn · 2026-06-09 · 217 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- An interactive physics simulator with 1000’s of balls, in your terminal · hn · 2026-01-19 · 75 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Gomently · ph · 2026-10-15 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.42
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.