I created what I call a 3D physics synthesizer, and when I get questions about how it works, it's always hard to explain without a diagram or two.

Finally I built this page where I explain how it works from basic principles, and every step of the way I provide a little interactive physics simulation to illustrate the explanation.

I tried to keep the explanation as simple as possible, although I plan to continue adding appendices to answer deeper questions (including those that involve math). So any questions you ask here, I will try to answer in a comment, but also might eventually get an even better answer!