# Particle Systems

**Track:** Physics, Motion & Emergence — Creative Coding — the existing 50
**Framework / surface:** p5.js
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** Arrays of Objects, Forces & Acceleration

**In one line:** A crowd of short-lived particles — fire, smoke, sparks, rain.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

A particle system manages a crowd of many short-lived elements, each with its own position, velocity, and lifespan, born from an emitter and dying when their time expires. No single particle matters; the population, continuously replenished, is the image—fire, smoke, rain, sparks. William Reeves introduced the technique in 1983 to render the Genesis effect for "Star Trek II," and Karl Sims extended it toward art in works such as "Particle Dreams." The aesthetic is the statistical sublime: turbulence and diffusion emerging from thousands of independent, individually trivial trajectories. Robert Hodgin's flight404 experiments show how flocking forces and color, layered over such systems, push them toward the painterly.