Plasma Sphere

Apr 2026

Like that one toy. Hold click and drag on the ball to attract the electricity! Desktop and mobile.

Why I Built It

I absolutely adore electricity and wanted to create a 3D environment that allows you to play with it. I've been fascinated with physical phenomena like electricity and magnetism, and how the basis of computers is manipulating an electron using a difference in electromagnetic force to make a transistor, which can be used to make logic gates, which can be used to make circuits, which can be used to make arithmetic logic units. With the inclusion of a clock and memory, you can create an entire computer architecture. On the newly formed computer, you can run programs directly on the hardware (baremetal) using binary instructions written for that computer architecture, or you could write a hardware abstraction layer that transpiles a common higher level language like assembly into the language the computer speaks. You can also write a language that's more readable to coders, that compiles into assembly, which is then translated into instructions for your computer! Using that higher level language, developers can move quickly and develop operating systems for a computer. Operating systems make it easier to write programs for the computer, because they handle the allocation of computer resources (they talk to the computer so your program doesn't have to worry about that). They also provide the illusion of isolation, meaning a software program written for an OS does not know other programs exist, and doesn't need to worry about playing nice with the hundreds of other applications running on the computer. The browser is a program on the OS. And this website is written for the browser! And it's all powered by 100 billion electrons jumping from one side of a microscopic germanium-doped silicon trough to the other.

Technologies

  • JavaScript
  • Three.js
  • WebGL

Tags

  • 3D Design
  • Interactive Design

Links