Working Interactive Prototypes
These pages are active works in progress. Several are still under construction, but each project is meant to be clicked, explored, and used in its current form.
The goal is a visual showcase where questions lead, models grow, and math helps tell the story.
Featured WXML Curiosity Projects
Broader interactive projects from the Spring 2026 WXML team, built around questions from nature, motion, sound, sports, waves, and visual art.
Building Shells with Calculus III
How do shells grow into spirals?
A shell-modeling lab using polar spirals, moving frames, and 3D surface construction.
Roller Coasters, Curvature, and Torsion
What makes a roller coaster curve feel smooth?
An interactive coaster lab connecting curvature, torsion, acceleration, and rider forces.
Guitar Waves and the Sound of Shape
Can we hear the geometry of a shape?
A wave-and-sound lab moving from a plucked string to body resonance and filtered sound.
Freekick Lab
Why does a spinning soccer ball bend?
A motion lab using gravity, drag, and the Magnus effect to model bending free kicks.
Weaving Curves
How can straight lines draw a curve?
A string-art-style exploration of closed curves, pairing rules, envelopes, and 3D loops.
2D Wave Equation Explorer
How does a surface remember its shape?
A rectangular-membrane wave lab using boundary conditions, Fourier modes, and pluck locations.
Visualizing the Laplace Transform
What does a differential equation look like in another world?
A working visual prototype connecting mass-spring motion to Laplace-domain geometry.
Math 124 Visual Projects
Course-based visuals that begin with Math 124 problems and turn related rates or optimization into something easier to see.
Sliding Ladder
What is actually changing when a ladder slides down a wall?
A related-rates visual for the classic ladder problem and firefighter variation.
Minimum Distance to a Curve
How do we find the closest point when distance keeps changing?
An optimization visual for the shortest distance from a point to a curve.
Draining Cone
How does dripping water become a story about changing volume?
A cone-draining visual connecting related rates to differential equations.
Self-Similar Melting
How do different shapes melt if they shrink in the same way?
A shape-comparison visual about volume, surface area, and self-similar melting.
Cart and Pulley
How does one moving object force another distance to change?
A related-rates visual connecting motion, geometry, and changing rope length.
Rowing and Running
Where should you land when rowing and running have different speeds?
A minimum-time optimization visual for crossing a river and running downstream.
Lighthouse Along a Coast
How does rotating light turn into motion along a coast?
A related-rates visual connecting angular motion, distance, and a moving light beam.