One Person Plus One Model Is Worth a Small Team from the Past

Techartist used Anthropic's Opus 5.5 and Three.js to make a 3D visualized physics textbook, Every Joule. Ten lessons cover the entire UK GCSE Physics "Energy" chapter: kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, heat, power, efficiency, energy resources, and conservation of energy. Free to view online.

First, some background. GCSE is the graduation exam taken by UK students around age 16, roughly equivalent to China's high school entrance exam. Someone checked the data: this year in the UK, 170,000 people took GCSE Physics as a single subject, and more than 1 million took combined science. Everyone has to study the energy chapter.

The book's interaction style is worth mentioning. Each diagram rises from the page and becomes a 3D line drawing, with energy flowing between energy stores in glowing colors. Students predict first, then test, then verify; they turn the page to see the answer, and get a stamp if they're correct. The author says education shouldn't be just text and flat diagrams.

The video above is the "efficiency" lesson, comparing the energy flow of a 60W bulb and two bulbs at 6.4J and 5.8J.

The production method isn't complicated: Opus 5.5 generates content, and Three.js renders 3D in the browser. Some online commenters mentioned that previously, making such a set of courseware required hiring a small team and polishing it for months. This time, one person plus one model finished it and released it for free. The cost structure has changed, and the way content is supplied should change with it.

In addition to the ten lessons, the book has an index, quizzes, source citations for every number, and teacher guides aligned to the AQA, OCR, Edexcel, Cambridge IGCSE, and CBSE syllabi. It's something for students to play with, and teachers can also use it directly.

There are technical controversies. A developer pointed out that in the energy conservation section, once there are many objects, Three.js frame rates drop in the browser; on mobile, WebGL memory pressure is high, and low-end devices may freeze. This is an unavoidable reality of 3D web applications. But the direction is not wrong. Another online commenter put it more directly: this is what AI in education should look like. Students predict, test, and verify for themselves; AI shouldn't be rushing to do their homework.

View online: https://iamtechartist.com/every-joule/