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Skip the apparatus, the spreadsheet, the graphing app and the word processor. PhysLab runs the experiment, measures it with real uncertainties, fits the graph and helps you write the report, all in one place.
The real simulator, live in your browser. Integrated step by step, not drawn.
A practical usually means a lab slot, borrowed kit, and four apps that don't talk to each other. In PhysLab your data never leaves the page: the simulator measures it, the graph fits it, and the report cites it.
Other tools give you a simulation, a spreadsheet, or a word processor. PhysLab is all three. And this graph isn't an illustration: it's real simulator output.
Change the launch speed, measure the range, and hold the angle at 40°. Each variable comes with the instrument it's read with, so the uncertainties are designed in from the start.
The bar for getting built: you can plot it straight and read physics off the gradient.
Perfect numbers teach that measurement is perfect. Here every reading passes through an instrument with a resolution, a reading rule and a random error. Repeats really do scatter, and your uncertainty will stand up in front of an examiner.
Uncertainty rounded to 1 s.f., value to the same decimal place. That's how it's marked, and the app does it everywhere (this page included).
Forward-mode automatic differentiation, not difference quotients, so it matches the hand-worked textbook value digit for digit. Addition rule (A-level/IB) or quadrature.
Line, proportional, polynomial, power, exponential, two sinusoids. Weighted least squares (Householder QR) or Levenberg–Marquardt with analytic Jacobians. Standard errors, χ²/dof, and max/min gradient lines on every fit.
Round the uncertainty to 1 s.f., then the value to the same decimal place. Applied everywhere, automatically.
Decay is sampled nucleus by nucleus, so half-life graphs scatter like real ones. The error bars are that scatter, with no instrument involved.
The second half of a practical: a document editor that knows what a lab report is. Figures number themselves, references reformat on demand, and it all exports to PDF or Word.
The acceleration due to gravity was taken as 9.81 m s⁻² (Halliday et al., 2013), and the range read with a tape measure.
Halliday, D., Resnick, R. and Walker, J. (2013) Fundamentals of Physics. 10th edn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
For teachers: set the practical, point it at the simulators, and get it handed in where it was done. Marks stay private until you give them back.
A physicist for the two hardest parts: turning a vague curiosity into an experiment that answers it, and turning results back into physics.
Connect OpenRouter with one click (no key to find, and some models are free), or paste a key. Your key stays in your browser, goes out only with each question, and is never stored with your work. That's why there's no bill to pass on.
Experiments, graphs and write-ups are saved in your own browser, and they stay there unless you send them somewhere.
Every simulator, every instrument and every uncertainty, free for as long as you like, with no card and nothing to install. The paid plans are for the write-up.
No analytics on students, no tracking, no ads. Lab-partner chats stay on your computer.
The physics runs in your browser. Once the page has loaded, experiments, graphs and write-ups all work with the network off.
Data as CSV or JSON, graphs as PNG or SVG, reports as PDF, Word or a portable file.