from Hacker News

Show HN: 2D Coulomb Gas Simulator

by swesnow on 2/16/26, 7:17 PM with 4 comments

A pretty simple but fun to play with simulator for a concept from mathematical physics called the "2D Coulomb gas". I originally made this for my Bachelor's thesis to create pretty pictures and build intuition but have recently gotten it a fresh coat of paint and better performance curtesy of WebGPU acceleration (ported with liberal help from Codex to get through all of the boilerplate).

Play around with it - hopefully read up more on the 2D Coulomb gas because it is an incredibly deep topic research wise.

  • by zeitgeistcowboy on 2/16/26, 8:56 PM

    Warning: if you increase the steps per frame it will break your phone. At least with my iPhone and Safari it stalls the entire phone.
  • by bizzyskillet on 2/16/26, 8:25 PM

    Awesome! Beautiful work. Mesmerizing, even