RunTheSim
Why Do Traffic Jams Appear Out of Nowhere?
Why do traffic jams appear out of nowhere? Past a density threshold the jam becomes the traffic itself, a backward wave that outlives every car inside it.
read →blog
Deep dives into the mechanisms
Every simulation on this site runs on a handful of recurring ideas. Below sit the explainers, one per mechanism, short enough to finish in a coffee and linked back to the sims where you can try it, plus a few longer pieces on the formats themselves. The deeper dive that belongs to a single simulation stays on that simulation's page; nothing here repeats it.
-
new
-
new
What Is a Power Law? The Giant Case Is the Rule
What is a power law? It says the rare giant case is the shape and not an outlier, and the wider the category you look at, the more of the total one case owns.
read → -
new
How Do Ants Find the Shortest Path? No Leader Needed
How do ants find the shortest path with no leader and no map? They never measure it. Short routes simply get walked more often, and pheromone does the rest.
read → -
new
What Is RunTheSim? Playable Browser Simulations
What is RunTheSim? A free collection of playable browser simulations, built solo in St. Gallen. Not the fantasy sports site with the almost-same name.
read → -
new
Business Simulation Browser Game: What It Teaches
A business simulation browser game hands you a company to run. The feedback loop underneath it is the part that sticks, and you can watch that loop on its own.
read → -
new
Reaction diffusion simulation online: what to look for
A reaction diffusion simulation online puts two sliders on one equation. Move them and the same rule makes dots, stripes, mazes or travelling waves.
read → -
new
Interactive simulations vs explainer videos
Both explain complex systems. Only one hands you the controls.
read → -
01
Emergence
How simple rules produce patterns no one planned.
read → -
02
Self-organization
Order without a designer, assembled from the bottom up.
read → -
03
Stigmergy
Coordination through traces in the environment, not direct communication.
read → -
04
Flocking
V-formations, fish schools, starling murmurations. The same three rules.
read → -
05
Pattern formation
Stripes, spots, spirals. Why nature keeps drawing them.
read → -
06
Cascades
One small event trips the next, the next trips two more, and then the whole system tips.
read → -
07
Power law
Why most things are small, a few are enormous, and averages lie here.
read → -
08
Criticality
The sweet spot between frozen and chaotic, where interesting things happen.
read → -
09
Feedback loop
When an output feeds back as an input, systems stabilise or they explode.
read → -
10
Optimization
Finding the best answer when the space of answers is enormous.
read →
