Interactive learning through exploration
VariableVista is a growing collection of interactive models, simulations, and investigations designed to help students explore systems, discover patterns, and explain cause-and-effect relationships.
Model Library
Choose a subject area, then open any model directly. All models are free to explore and require no student account.
Model Collection
Cell biology, genetics, microscopy, physiology, ecosystems, and laboratory investigations.
Explore microscope parts, practice focusing specimens, and complete a readiness check before using real laboratory equipment.
Investigate photosynthesis using a virtual Elodea experiment. Test light, carbon dioxide, and temperature, count oxygen bubbles, and compare photosynthesis with cellular respiration.
Investigate how heart rate responds to repeated exercise and recovery. Collect virtual pulse data, graph the response, and explain how the body returns toward a stable internal condition.
Analyze microscope samples, calculate mitotic index, test cell-cycle regulation, and use multiple lines of evidence to identify disrupted cell division.
Follow genetic information from DNA to protein. Build complementary DNA strands, transcribe mRNA, translate codons, diagnose molecular case files, and investigate how mutations can change protein outcomes.
Manage a digital fish hatchery and investigate how feeding, aeration, temperature, water exchange, crowding, oxygen, and waste affect fish growth and survival.
Investigate how sea otters, sea urchins, kelp growth, ocean temperature, storms, and protection can reshape a coastal ecosystem over thirty years.
Model Collection
Reactions, periodic trends, gas behavior, nuclear chemistry, pressure, and evidence-based laboratory investigations.
Balance chemical reactions by changing whole-number coefficients, compare atom counts on both sides, classify reactions, and connect balanced equations to conservation of mass.
Explore the full periodic table, compare measured element properties, graph periodic trends, and use evidence to predict how atomic properties change across periods and down groups.
Manipulate pressure, volume, temperature, and amount of gas, collect controlled-trial data, graph relationships, and connect Boyle, Charles, Gay-Lussac, and Avogadro laws to the ideal gas equation.
Investigate alpha, beta-minus, and gamma decay, determine daughter nuclei, build nuclear equations, compare shielding, and model radioactive half-life using both random samples and theoretical decay.
Compare dried, normal, and soaked popcorn kernels to investigate how moisture affects popping success, steam pressure, and popcorn quality.
Model Collection
Plate tectonics, earthquakes, meteorites, stars, galaxies, and evidence from Earth and space.
Analyze seismic wave data, calculate the distance to an earthquake, triangulate its epicenter, and use hazard patterns to help a community prepare for future earthquakes.
Scan a simplified Pacific transect from Papua New Guinea to Peru, construct a depth profile, identify ocean-floor features, and use evidence from ridges and trenches to predict plate motion.
Explore meteorite records on an interactive world map. Search individual meteorites, compare observed falls with later finds, and investigate patterns in location, year, mass, and classification.
Investigate how a star’s initial mass affects its temperature, luminosity, lifetime, fusion stages, element production, and final fate.
Analyze galaxy spectra, build a distance-velocity graph, scan the cosmic microwave background, and evaluate evidence that supports the Big Bang theory.
Model Collection
Energy, climate, wildfire, groundwater, transportation, and human–environment systems.
Build a heat-resilient city by balancing roads, buildings, trees, green spaces, water, shade, construction costs, and the urban heat-island effect.
Build a 10 × 10 landscape, place an ignition point, and test how fire danger, drought, temperature, wind, and terrain affect the direction and rate of wildfire spread.
Explore how aquifer material, hydraulic gradient, recharge, pumping, confining layers, and contaminant properties affect groundwater flow and plume movement.
Build a 50-year electricity plan for Oregon. Meet rising demand, phase out fossil fuels, and balance reliability, land use, climate impact, and lifetime cost.
Explore Washington’s registered electric vehicle population using an interactive GIS map. Filter the data, investigate geographic patterns, and compare two counties using real state registration records.
Model Collection
Forces, motion, pressure, physical systems, engineering design, and evidence-based data analysis.
Explore a working hydraulic clock inspired by Bernard Gitton’s water clock at NEMO Science Museum. Observe how reservoirs, pendulum motion, siphons, minute chambers, and hour globes work together to measure time.
Explore real California transportation data to compare crash counts, crash rates, traffic exposure, roadway types, vulnerable road users, and statewide safety trends.
Test how mass, applied force, and friction change an object's motion. Compare continuous-force and push-and-release trials using live force data and motion graphs.
How It Works
Adjust one or more variables using sliders, buttons, and interactive controls.
Watch the system respond through animations, measurements, graphs, and visual changes.
Run different scenarios and compare how changing conditions affects the outcome.
Use evidence from the model to explain patterns, relationships, and cause-and-effect connections.
Built for Classrooms
VariableVista models are designed to support prediction, investigation, data analysis, systems thinking, and scientific explanation.
Keep temperature, feeding, water exchange, and starting population constant. Change only the aeration level and compare the results.
Start the InvestigationAbout VariableVista
Scientific models simplify reality so learners can focus on important relationships. VariableVista models are educational tools, not real-world prediction systems. Each model includes limitations so students can consider what the model represents and what it leaves out.
Start Exploring
Manage a digital fish hatchery, design a heat-resilient city, build Oregon’s 50-year energy plan, investigate groundwater flow, test wildfire spread, or explore how a hydraulic water clock measures time.