🎛 Interactive physics exhibit

Kinetica.

A playground of motion · play · pause · learn

Most of us were handed physics as equations to memorise. Kinetica hands it back as something you can feel: a spinning disc paints light as it travels, and the way it moves is the lesson. Bounce it off walls, slingshot it around a sun, bend it through glass — and the ideas behind the picture quietly explain themselves.

3 worlds ~29 concepts felt Demo · Game · Learn Ages 12+ 240-colour light trails

See it live

No spin — every bounce is a plain mirror
With spin — the phase steers every rebound

These are the real game, running embedded. The left is Level 1 with spin switched off; the right adds spin and the whole picture changes.

The one idea at the heart of it

A still ball bounces off a wall like light off a mirror — the angle going in equals the angle coming out. Give that ball a spin, and the tidy rule quietly breaks. At the instant it touches the wall, the disc's phase — how far around its spin it happens to be — nudges the rebound one way or the other.

You never see the spin directly. Yet it is the secret engine of every path Kinetica paints: turn spin off and the trails are calm and mirror-neat; turn it up and they weave into something alive and unrepeatable. That single, felt twist is the doorway — and once you are through it, gravity and light are waiting in the next two worlds.

Three worlds, one disc

🟦
Level 1 · The Table

Kinetic billiards

The disc rolls a frictionless table and rebounds by its spin phase, painting light between bounces. This is mechanics you can watch.

spin-phaseinertiareflectiondistance vs displacementchaos
● Live & playable · demo above
🪐
Level 2 · The Field

Gravity & orbits

A sun sits in the middle and pulls. Now the disc curves — loop it into an orbit, or slingshot it around the sun to reach a target it could never reach in a straight line.

gravityorbitescape velocitycentripetalenergy
◐ Playable in the game · standalone demo after tuning
🔬
Level 3 · The Lab

Light & optics

A slab of glass crosses the arena. The disc behaves like a ray of light — its path kinks as it enters, and at a shallow enough angle it can't escape at all.

refractionSnell's lawtotal internal reflectiondispersion
◐ Playable in the game · standalone demo after tuning

Honest status: the Table is fully verified, so its demo runs live above. The Field and Lab engines are built and playable inside the game, but their standalone embedded demos are held back until the orbital and refraction constants are tuned by eye — we won't showcase physics we haven't checked.

What you'll feel

Around twenty-nine ideas are already felt inside the engine — never as a wall of text, but the moment the disc does the thing. Each tag below is marked 🟢 real simulation (the engine truly computes it) or 🟡 maths of the picture (a pattern in what you see), because honesty about which is which is the whole point.

~29 felt now, on the way to a planned catalogue of 36. We don't claim a concept until the engine actually simulates it.

Three ways to play

🎛

Demo

Free sandbox. Set the spin, the speed, the shape, and just watch it paint. Concepts whisper softly as they happen.

🎯

Game

Place a target and try to hit it — across all three worlds. In the Field that means a slingshot; in the Lab, bending light through glass.

📖

Learn

Play, then pause the moment something surprises you and a card explains it with the live numbers from your own run.

One idea, three depths — go as deep as you want

  • S · a whisper — in play, a one-line card with your run's live numbers, right when it happens.
  • M · a study card — what it is, how it works, how it works here, the edge cases and three real-world echoes.
  • L · a full exhibit — a standalone page like this one: live demo, deep explanation, glossary, FAQ and questions. (You're reading the flagship; each concept has its own.)

Go deeper on one idea

Every concept opens into its own standalone article — a live demo, the principle, how it shows up in the game, real-world examples, a glossary, an FAQ, and a 32-question set to test yourself. All thirty are below, grouped by world.

🟦 The Table · mechanics, Level 1

The bounce that isn't a mirror
Why a spinning disc rebounds by its phase, not by reflection — the engine of every Kinetica path.
Read →
Spin you can't see, doing the work
Phase: how far through a rotation, 0–360° and wrapping — the invisible quantity that picks each bounce.
Read →
No push, so it keeps going
Newton's first law, drawn in light: every straight stretch between walls is inertia.
Read →
It roams far but ends near
Distance is the whole journey; displacement is the straight line home — and the gap is the story.
Read →
Speed, and which way
Speed is how fast; velocity adds a direction — and why that difference changes everything.
Read →
Angle in equals angle out
The law of reflection: every clean wall bounce mirrors about the normal.
Read →
The push when things touch
The wall's contact force, the perpendicular normal push, and Newton's equal-and-opposite third law.
Read →
When motion dies away
A resistive force draining energy, so every real swing and ripple fades to rest.
Read →
A hair apart, then worlds apart
Sensitivity to initial conditions — tiny differences exploding into the butterfly effect.
Read →
The wall's straight-out line
The normal: the perpendicular reference line that every bounce and bend angle is measured from.
Read →
A perfectly bouncy wall
Elastic collisions keep all their kinetic energy — restitution e = 1, so the disc bounces forever.
Read →
Colours that never clash
The golden angle, 137.5°, spaces the trail's colours so evenly they barely repeat — a sunflower's trick.
Read →
Round and round, back to start
Modular wrapping: phase past 360° and colour past 240 loop back to zero, like a clock past 12.
Read →
Each hit makes a wave
Every strike sends a ring spreading out — a wave carrying energy outward while the surface only bobs.
Read →
Why the trails glow
Light adds where lines cross, piling up into a glow — the additive colour a screen uses to make white.
Read →

🪐 The Field · gravity, Level 2

🔬 The Lab · optics, Level 3

Questions people ask

What is Kinetica?

A self-contained, play-to-learn physics exhibit. You spin a disc that paints glowing trails, and across three worlds you feel mechanics, gravity and optics rather than just reading about them.

Do I need to know any physics first?

No. Every idea is explained in plain twelve-year-old language, on the spot, tied to exactly what you just saw the disc do. Play first; learn as curiosity strikes.

What are the three worlds?

The Table is kinetic billiards — a spinning disc whose spin decides each bounce. The Field adds a sun whose gravity bends the path into orbits and slingshots. The Lab adds glass that refracts the disc like a ray of light.

Why doesn't the spinning disc bounce like a mirror?

Because the disc's phase — how far around its rotation it has turned at the instant of contact — sets the rebound. With no spin it is a plain mirror bounce; with spin, the phase quietly steers it.

How many physics concepts does it cover?

Around twenty-nine are already felt inside the engine across the three worlds, on the way to a planned catalogue of thirty-six. We don't claim a concept until the engine truly simulates it.

Can I just open and play?

Yes — Kinetica is a single page. Open it and play, with nothing to install.

What is the teaching method, and who owns Kinetica?

Kinetica follows a feel-first method: you play, and the instant something surprises you, a layered card explains it — a one-line whisper in play, a study card, or a full standalone article with a live demo, glossary, FAQ and a 32-question set. Every concept is tagged 🟢 real simulation (the engine truly computes it) or 🟡 maths of the picture (a pattern in what you see), because honesty about which is which is the whole point. Kinetica — its original pedagogy, voice, and design — is copyright © LLOS.ai, 2026, all rights reserved.

Key takeaways

  • Feel, don't memorise — the way the disc moves is the lesson.
  • One mechanic opens three worlds — spin-phase (Table), gravity (Field), refraction (Lab).
  • ~29 concepts are felt in the engine now, honestly tagged 🟢 real vs 🟡 picture.
  • Go as deep as you like — a whisper, a study card, or a full standalone exhibit.

Keep exploring

Copyright © LLOS.ai · 2026 — Original pedagogy, voice, and design — all rights reserved.