EQUILIBRIUM — Project Description

EQUILIBRIUM is an interactive virtual science laboratory designed to help students understand Physics, Thermodynamics, and Chemistry through experimentation rather than memorization.

Instead of simply reading formulas or asking an AI chatbot for explanations, students can design their own experiments, make predictions, run simulations, observe results, compare them with their predictions, and understand the scientific principles behind what happened.

Core workflow

Predict → Experiment → Observe → Compare → Understand

🔬 Physics Laboratory

Students can construct and customize experiments involving:

• Free fall and gravity
• Projectile motion
• Friction and sliding
• Collisions and bouncing
• Pendulums
• Motion under forces
• Object shape, mass, dimensions and material
• Air resistance and drag
• Wind
• Surface friction and coefficient of restitution
• Different planets and gravitational fields

The simulation visualizes the object’s motion while generating scientific data such as position, velocity, acceleration, forces, energy, and collision behavior. Interactive graphs allow students to see how these quantities change over time.

🌡️ Thermodynamics Laboratory

Students can explore concepts such as:

• Temperature
• Pressure
• Volume
• Ideal gas behavior
• Real-fluid behavior
• Particle motion
• Gas-law relationships

Interactive particle simulations and graphs help students visualize relationships that are difficult to understand from equations alone.

⚗️ Chemistry Laboratory

Students can interact with molecular structures using scientific visualization tools:

• Molecule exploration
• 2D molecular structures
• 3D molecular visualization
• Chemical equations
• Equation balancing
• Molecular properties

Libraries such as RDKit.js and 3Dmol.js provide the molecular visualization layer.

🤖 Local AI Explanation

EQUILIBRIUM uses a locally hosted Gemma 3 4B model through LM Studio as an educational explanation layer.

The AI does not replace the scientific simulation or perform the authoritative calculations.

Instead:

Scientific engine → numerical results → Gemma → student-friendly explanation

After an experiment, Gemma can explain:

• Why the result occurred
• Which physical/chemical principles were involved
• Whether the student’s prediction matched
• Why the result differed from their prediction
• What variables affected the outcome

This keeps the scientific calculations deterministic while using AI where it is most useful: helping students understand the results.

What makes EQUILIBRIUM different

The main idea is to turn passive learning into experiment-based learning.

A student doesn’t just see:

F = ma

They can change the mass, force, friction, gravity, or other parameters, run the experiment, watch the object respond, inspect the graphs, and then ask the system to explain what they observed.

Similarly, instead of simply memorizing gas laws or molecular structures, students can manipulate variables and observe the scientific relationships directly.

In short: EQUILIBRIUM is a virtual science laboratory where students don’t just learn scientific laws—they experiment with them.