About

About this lab

Wobble Lab is an independent project run from Valais, Switzerland. It exists because interactive physics is more fun to poke at than to read about.

What is here

Articles about soft matter, the branch of physics covering gels, foams, pastes and emulsions, everything too floppy to be a solid and too structured to be a liquid. Alongside them, simulations that run in your browser so you can push on the thing being described.

Nothing is pre-rendered. Every frame is solved while you are looking at it, which is why you can interrupt a wobble halfway and it responds.

Why jelly

Because it is the most available soft solid there is. A dessert jelly and an industrial hydrogel obey the same equations, and one of them is in the fridge. Most of what makes soft matter interesting can be demonstrated with something you can eat afterwards.

On accuracy

The articles aim to be correct rather than impressive. Where a number varies with formulation, temperature or measurement method, that is said rather than smoothed over, and a rule of thumb is labelled as one.

The simulation is a model, not a measurement. It reproduces the behaviour that matters for intuition, volume conservation, shear resistance and damping, but it is not a finite element analysis and it will not predict the yield point of a real gel.

How it is funded

A single advertising slot, placed in the page flow so that it never covers the simulation or intercepts a drag. No interstitials, no auto-injected overlays. If the slot cannot be filled it collapses and gives the space back.

Contact

Corrections are welcome, particularly on the science, via the contact page.