WWAVETANKCOMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS LAB

INSTRUMENT 01 / WAVE FIELD

Wave propagation
in two dimensions.

A numerical wave laboratory for exploring interference, diffraction, resonance, and the invisible architecture of sound.

START HERE
  1. 1Choose an experiment
  2. 2Move the yellow emitter or white probe
  3. 3Compare what you see, hear, and measure
PRESSURE FIELD p(x,y,t)
− RAREFACTION COMPRESSION +
180 × 112 CELLSΔt 0.016760 FPS TARGET
03 EXPERIMENTS
QUESTION

Where can two waves make silence?

REPRESENTATIVE EQUATIONΔr = (m + ½)λ → cancellation
Watch for
Behind the slits, strong and quiet bands alternate as you move the probe.
Why
Path-length differences make the two arrivals reinforce or cancel.
04 LIVE MEASUREMENT
PROBE PRESSURE+0.000normalized
FIELD ENERGY0.00relative units
PROBE AUDIO55× frequency shift

FIELD NOTES / LEARN AS YOU EXPERIMENT

What are you
looking at?

The color is not the air moving across the screen. It is pressure: red regions are compressed, teal regions are rarefied. Each cell updates from its four nearest neighbors, so a local disturbance becomes a traveling wave.

01

Diffraction & interference

At each narrow opening, the incoming plane wave becomes a new circular source. Where the two circles arrive in phase, their pressures add. Where compression meets rarefaction, they cancel.

TRY THIS

Choose Double Slit. Move the probe vertically behind the barrier. Watch its pressure alternate between strong and quiet bands.

Bright bands
Constructive interference
Dark bands
Destructive interference

NUMERICAL METHOD / LIVE

Inside this model

Measurements update twice per second. MEASURED values come from this instrument’s frame loop; DERIVED values combine measured time with the known grid work.

FRAME LOOPMEASURED
0frames
per second
THROUGHPUTDERIVED
0.0million cell
updates / sec
Grid180 × 112
Cells20,160
Steps / frame3
Field buffers236 KB
JS heapbrowser hidden
DATA FLOWLIVE MODEL
01INPUTEmitter + walls
→
02COMPUTE5-point stencil
→
03RENDERPressure → color
→
04PROBEVisual + audio

Every visible frame is a chain of transformations. The simulation state never “knows” about color; the renderer never changes the physics. Probe audio transposes the sub-audible model frequency by 55× and uses pressure to modulate pitch and loudness.