Earth
Plate boundaries
Compare spreading, subduction and sliding. Change the plate speed and inspect the exposed rock layers.
In development
Makarov Earth Suite
Weather, water and landscapes: explore rainbows, sea breezes, rivers and geological processes.
33 modules · Page 1 / 2 · 47 planned
This Suite is still in development. These are implemented experiments, not a released product.
Contact & licences
Earth
Subduction: an ocean plate descends
Follow a moving oceanic slab beneath a continent and compare its age with the temperature profile of cooling lithosphere.
Earth
Fault rupture: when stored stress becomes slip
Load a segmented fault, watch weakening trigger rupture, and compare slip, shear stress and seismic moment.
Earth
Lava flow: cooling changes the journey
A hot viscous flow advances down a slope, loses heat and thickens as its viscosity rises.
Earth
Rainfall and runoff
Make it rain over a catchment. Compare permeable soil with rapid surface runoff; then stop the rain and watch drainage.
Earth
Groundwater: pumping reshapes the flow
Explore a confined aquifer with recharge, a pumping well and a low-permeability barrier using a conservative field solver.
Earth
Rain and soil: where does the water go?
Watch a wetting front move down through soil while rainfall is divided between infiltration, ponding and runoff.
Earth
Landslide: water weakens a slope
Increase pore pressure and compare driving stress with friction and cohesion before a slope begins to slide.
Earth
Glacier: a river of slowly moving ice
Change the snowline and watch ice thickness evolve through snowfall, melting and Glen-law deformation.
Earth
Sea and land breezes
Land warms and cools faster than water. Follow the circulation and switch between day and night.
Earth
Cloud formation: lifting an air parcel
Follow rising air as it cools, reaches saturation and turns part of its water vapour into liquid droplets.
Earth
Rain shadow: why one side of a mountain is dry
Track moist air over a mountain: condensation removes water on ascent and dry warming lowers humidity on descent.
Earth
Urban heat: the thermal memory of a city
Compare streets and vegetation through a day-night cycle with sunlight, heat storage, wind exchange and anthropogenic heating.
Physics / Math / Earth
Predator–prey (Lotka–Volterra)
An agent ecosystem: grass, herds, hunters - and Lotka–Volterra cycles.
Astronomy / Earth
Inside planets and the Sun
Probe a calculated rocky planet, or explore reference cutaways of the Sun and the four giant planets.
Astronomy / Earth
Seasons and obliquity
Why summer is warm: not because the Earth is closer to the Sun (it is closer in January) but because the axis leans, and a leaning hemisphere gets a higher Sun for longer. The Earth on its orbit with its axis fixed in space, lit from where the Sun is; an observer at any latitude with the day's Sun arc over the horizon; day length, noon altitude and daily insolation from the geometry, and the two hemispheres through the year.
Physics / Astronomy / Earth
Coriolis on a rotating Earth
A free particle over a rotating planet: the Coriolis force alone curls a straight shot into a circle.
Astronomy / Earth
Planetary energy balance
A 3D planet, sunlight and infrared paths, and a measurable energy budget. Change the atmosphere and follow surface warming or cooling.
Physics / Astronomy / Earth
Aurora (magnetosphere)
A charged particle on a real dipole field line: it either mirrors before reaching the atmosphere, or precipitates - decided entirely by its pitch angle.
Astronomy / Earth
Earth's orbital climate rhythms
Compare eccentricity, tilt and precession with summer sunlight at a selected latitude. Move through 400,000 years.
Some modules belong to more than one Suite. Shared experiments have one description here.