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Science Toys
Simulations you can meddle with: orbits, evolution, chemistry, cellular automata. Understanding through interference rather than through reading.
15 sites
Ben Eater's flocking simulation with the three rules exposed as sliders, so you can break the flock deliberately.
- <1 min
- Desktop
A stocked chemistry bench in the browser where you can mix reagents and get it badly wrong at no cost.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Interactive models of what complexity science likes best — epidemics, flocking, synchronisation, forest fires.
- 1 hr+
- Desktop
Home of Conway's Game of Life — pattern archive, wiki and a board for setting your own cells running.
- 10 min
- Desktop
An explorable on how ideas and riots spread through a social network, with the contagion thresholds under your control.
- 10 min
A graphing calculator good enough that people make art with it — type a function and drag its parameters about.
- <1 min
Build a circuit and watch current move through it as coloured dots, with an oscilloscope available on any node.
- 10 min
- Desktop
A toy about synchronisation — a few hundred blinking dots that agree on a rhythm with no conductor anywhere.
- 2 min
A genetic algorithm evolves two-dimensional cars across rough terrain while you watch generations fail forward.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Geometry, algebra and calculus tools in one place, plus a huge shared library of constructions others have built.
- 10 min
Draw circles and arrows, press play, and your scribble runs as a working feedback-loop simulation.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Search any molecule and spin its three-dimensional structure, with spectra and crystal data alongside it.
- 2 min
- Desktop
Colorado's library of physics, chemistry and maths simulations, used in classrooms everywhere and free to meddle with.
- 10 min
Write a Turing machine in a few lines and watch the tape head shuffle back and forth carrying it out.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Thousands of interactive maths and science notebooks contributed over two decades, each one a single slider-driven idea.
- 10 min
- Desktop
How we picked these
Every entry in Detour is hand-sorted rather than scraped: filed under one category, given one to three moods, and placed in a time band for how quickly it pays off. The practical facts — cost, sign-up, sound, device and whether it is safe at a desk — are recorded per site and shown on every card, so you can rule things out before you click.
Science Toys: questions
How many sites are in Science Toys?
15 sites, each hand-sorted by category, mood and how long it takes to pay off.
Which of these sites are free with no sign-up?
15 of the 15 are free and need no account. None of them are paid.
Do these sites work on a phone, and are they safe for work?
5 of 15 work on a phone; the rest are desktop only. 15 are safe for work and 15 work with the sound off.