Ampere vs Dandelion
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side ā with what reviewers say about each.
Ampere
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Explore plasma physics through interactive simulations and transparent educational calculators. SIMULATE PLASMA PHENOMENA ⢠Guide animated plasma-globe filaments ⢠Explore a Paschen-law glow-discharge model ⢠Drive a 13.56 MHz RF reactor solved by a global discharge model ⢠Adjust an illustrative tokamak control visualization CALCULATE CORE PARAMETERS ⢠Debye shielding length ⢠Electron plasma frequency ⢠Paschen breakdown voltage ⢠Synthetic planar Langmuir-probe response ⢠Lossless 13.56 MHz RF L-network matching ⢠Bohdansky physical sputter-yield estimates Ampere works offline and requires no account or purchase. Every advanced model states its assumptions and limitations. Results are intended for education and first-pass exploration, not professional engineering or safety decisions.
Dandelion
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A star cluster in the Galaxy's tidal field is a dandelion clock: two-body encounters slowly hand stars enough energy to drift past the Jacobi radius, where the Milky Way's tide plucks them away into two long tails of seeds. Dandelion integrates this process on your device's GPU: a real, self-gravitating direct N-body simulation with the Galaxy's tidal field, stellar evolution, and tidal tails followed to kiloparsec distances. For the open-cluster presets, every point of light is one star. WHAT'S REAL - King, Plummer and EFF initial models, sampled from their distribution functions - Kroupa and Salpeter initial mass functions - Two-body relaxation, mass segregation, evaporation - The exact differential Galactic tide, with no linearized approximation - Stellar evolution: main-sequence lifetimes, red giants, white dwarfs, kicked neutron stars, black holes WHAT'S NOT - No binaries and no few-body regularization - No molecular clouds, spiral arms or bar: real clusters near the Sun dissolve 3 to 5 times faster than the smooth tide alone The app admits its limits where they matter, in plain sight. THIRTEEN CLUSTERS FROM THE LITERATURE Adopt the Hyades, the Pleiades, Praesepe, a scaled Pal 5 stream and nine more, each recreated from published parameters. Or build your own cluster and read an honest prognosis, relaxation time, Jacobi radius, dissolution estimate, before you release it to the wind. WATCH, MEASURE, RIDE ALONG Fly through the cluster as it evolves at up to 20 million years per second. Reverse time. Track bound mass, radii, velocity dispersion and tail growth in seven live charts. Tap a star to see its mass, speed and fate, and ride along as the tide carries it down the tail. Share any cluster as a link: same seed, same stars, on any device. No accounts, no ads, no data collection.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Dandelion at every 4 days against Ampere's every 145 months. Ampere's advantage is iOS requirement (16.4 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Ampere ships an update every 145 months, Dandelion every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Ampere | Dandelion |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 145 months | Every 4 days ā better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 ā better | 26.0 |
| Further details ā not scored | ||
| Size | 51 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Scott Beilfuss | Stefan Meingast |
In-app purchases
Ampere
No in-app purchases
Dandelion
No in-app purchases









