Chaos Lab vs Pic2Mag
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chaos Lab
Explore the beauty of chaos through interactive simulations of mathematical objects, chemical reactions, and celestial mechanics. Manipulate parameters with device tilt and touch to create stunning visual art and understand complex scientific principles.
- Interactive strange attractors
- Chemical oscillator simulations
- 3-body chaos simulation
- Julian fractal morphing
- Real-time parameter control
- Multiple attractors included
Read full descriptionHide full description
Chaos Lab puts the beauty of chaos in your hands. With a tilt of your device, you control the parameters of beautiful mathematical objects called strange attractors, the reaction rates of a chemical oscillator, the position of two stars in a 3-body chaos simulation, and the shape of the Julian fractal. Now you can be an experimentalist and an artist. Using real-time integration of over 6,000 points for the attractors whose parameters are tied to your motion, over 7,000 data points for a fractal which morphs at your command, ten "asteroids" demonstrating chaotic sensitivity to initial conditions in a jittering twin-star system where the stars move with your tilt (can you keep them from escaping?), and a real-time BZ-reaction simulation which you control by both tilt and touch, this is chaos as you've never seen it before. Chaos Lab comes loaded with four of the most stunning attractors in chaos theory. The Rössler and Lorenz attractors are well known, but the Thomas and Newton-Leipnik attractors are relatively new and quite amazing! This work has been supported in part by grant PHY-0754081 from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Nonlinear Dynamics Research Group at Drexel University (directed by Dr. Robert Gilmore), and the Department of Physics at Drexel University. Please note, some of these experiments will run slower on the older models of iPhones and iPod touch devices. Find the beauty in the chaos!
Pic2Mag
Visualize magnetic and electric fields by drawing magnets or charges. This educational tool helps students understand physics concepts by displaying field lines and voltage potentials. It offers a free, ad-free learning experience for iOS devices.
- Draw magnets to visualize magnetic fields
- Draw charges to visualize electric fields
- Magnetostatic and Electrostatic modes
- Field line and voltage potential plotting
- Caches results for faster processing
- Ad-free learning experience
Read full descriptionHide full description
The user draws the magnets and the Pic2Mag program draws the magnetic fields. The Field Calculator program now has a Magnetostatic mode, and an Electrostatic mode to plot either magnetic fields or electric fields. The program designed to help students learn Magnetic fields and Electric fields. You can draw magnets and look at the magnetic field, or you can draw electric charges and look at the electric voltage field. The best free magnetic science program you can download! No advertisements, it's just all app. The app can process most images in just a few minutes. The app caches it's results so the more that you use it, the faster the program processes images. Red pixels represent magnets with a North pole surface facing the observer, and Blue pixels represent magnets with a South pole surface facing the observer. Pink pixels represent positive electric charges, and Dark Purple pixels represent negative electric charges
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Chaos Lab at every 3 days against Pic2Mag's every 31 months. Chaos Lab also leads on ratings volume (8 vs 1). Pic2Mag's advantage is iOS requirement (8.0 vs 18.0). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Chaos Lab against 5.0 for Pic2Mag. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Chaos Lab has 8 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Chaos Lab ships an update every 3 days, Pic2Mag every 31 months. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chaos Lab | Pic2Mag |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (8 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 68.8% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 31 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 8.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 108 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Timothy D. Jones | Michael Snyder |
Customer experience
Chaos Lab
Pic2Mag
In-app purchases
Chaos Lab
No in-app purchases
Pic2Mag
No in-app purchases









