HandyPlanet vs CHIRAKU

Bring the solar system to your fingertips in vivid 3D. Choose a planet—Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, or Mercury—tap to view it as a rotatable globe, and explore short facts about size, distance from the Sun, day and year length, and moons. A simple, educational way for anyone to discover the planets.

CHIRAKU is an interactive educational app that brings earth science to life with moving diagrams. Plate motion, earthquakes, volcanoes, rocks, the Earth's interior, geomagnetism and atmospheric circulation are each shown in four phases, step by step, ending with a real landform or a typical observation. Every element in the diagram has a name label, so you can always see what is happening. Developer: Fuji Bit Inc. CHIRAKU is the earth-science edition of the "-raku" science simulation series. It helps you understand what you learn in middle-school and high-school earth science and introductory university geoscience, as if the textbook figures had started to move. 9 simulations in 3 categories: Moving Plates & Earthquakes: - Plate tectonics: See landforms form at the three kinds of plate boundaries (divergent, convergent and transform) in four stages, ending with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Japan Trench and the Japanese islands, and the San Andreas Fault. - Seismic waves: Watch P waves (longitudinal) and S waves (transverse) spread from the focus and reach three stations, where seismographs record the initial tremor and the main shaking. The farther the station, the longer the S-P time. - Epicenter location: Use Omori's formula to turn the S-P times at three stations into distances, and find the epicenter where three circles meet. Volcanoes & Rocks: - Volcanic eruption: See how the eruption style changes from Hawaiian to Strombolian, Vulcanian and Plinian as the magma's viscosity and gas content increase. - Lava flow: Release four lavas of different viscosity one after another and compare their speed, thickness and how far they travel. The speed is calculated with Jeffreys' equation. - Rock cycle (new): Follow one rock as it travels granite → mud → mudstone → gneiss → magma, changing between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock. The current depth and temperature are shown too. Inside and Around the Earth: - Earth interior: Trace the paths of P and S waves through the crust, mantle, outer core and inner core, and see from the S-wave shadow zone that the outer core is liquid. - Geomagnetism: Explore the Earth's field lines, the magnetosphere, how it shields us from the solar wind, and the geomagnetic reversal about 770,000 years ago (the origin of the name Chibanian). - Atmospheric circulation (new): Starting from heating at the equator, see the three cells (Hadley, Ferrel and polar) and the belts of trade winds, westerlies and polar easterlies form, and why rainy belts and desert belts appear. Features: - Every simulation runs in 4 phases, with the phase name and a one-line explanation always shown at the top - A name label on every element; the last phase shows the real example and stops automatically - Move between phases with the previous and next buttons and set the speed from 0.5x to 3x - An explanation sheet with formulas for every simulation (Omori's formula, Snell's law, the Coriolis force and more) - Clean, easy-to-read design (dark and light themes) - On iPad in landscape, the diagram and control panel are shown side by side - 16 languages (Japanese, English, Chinese Simplified/Traditional, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), German, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Russian, Italian, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese), following your device language - No sign-in: start exploring right away Price: - Free - In-app purchases: none - Subscriptions: none - Ads: a banner ad by Pangle at the bottom of the screen