I mean, they're not super precise, but I don't really need them to be. This was more of a coding/physics exercise that I came up with to see if I could make something complex run on something simple. I'm not looking to run COD on the arduino or anything like that. But, if memory becomes a crippling issue, I'll probably look into something like what you mentioned.
Being the "extremist" that I am, I'm trying to get this thing to have like 40 particles, but at some point it will probably become unrealistic. But if there's a solution I don't know about that could help, I thought I'd ask anyone that has more experience than me in coding.