The fad of the moment among the physics majors is a shareware game called Pocket Tanks, in which players on opposite sides of the screen fire various weapons at one another, adjusting the launch angle and overall power in order to hit the target. Every time I walk into a room with two or more students in it, they seem to be playing Pocket Tanks. They jokingly justify it as studying for the projectile motion problems on the Physics GRE, and to the extent that being able to predict the range of a particle based on sketchy information about angles and relative launch speed can help, they should kick ass on the test…
I’m thinking of this in part because I’m going to spend something like six hours proctoring exams over the next two days, most of those hours the early-morning ones where I’m not really competent to review NSF grant proposals or any of the more professionally useful things I might be doing. Which means I’m in the market for some good ways to waste time.
So, recommend some time-wasters to me. The rooms where I’ll be watching students take tests have Internet-connected computers in them, so what should I be doing with them to pass the time? Preferably something that doesn’t involve sound (as one of the computers doesn’t even have speakers attached), and bonus points will be awarded for Web games with actual physics content.
(Re-)read The God Delusion and start another round of heated debate on scienceblogs.com LOL
If you have any Internet connectivity where you’ll be proctoring, then blog, of course.
Any etymological connection between this and “proctology”?? 🙂
I make a point of trying not to blog at work. I’ll read blogs, and sometimes comment, but I try not to post from work, lest it become a habit.
You mean Physics majors discovered Scorched Earth?
Blue Ball Machine
Laser game
Here’s one; this is one of my favorite toys, and it has astronomy content:
http://haydenplanetarium.org/universe/
Another fun toy, that doesn’t require installation of software, but does require a Java plugin:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/JavaLab/GalCrashWeb/main.html
Or, you could teach yourself vpython and visually simulate the fermi mechanism for cosmic ray acceleration….
I waste a lot of time sitting down in a Linux command line and typing the word “boggle”. (You need to have installed whatever packages has the “bsdgames” in it.)
-Rob
Wasting time? I’d suggest checking out Teagames:
http://www.teagames.com/
Not really physics related, though I suppose 9Ball Pool would almost qualify.
Thanks for pointing this one out! I have fond memories of playing a virtually identical game (“Tank Wars”) with my (much older) brother ten years ago. It takes just a few projectiles and some explosions to bridge the cultural gap, I guess…
Dice Wars: http://gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html
My favorite game of the type you mention is Moonbase Commander. Instead of just weapons, you can launch buildings to collect energy (which lets you fire more weapons in a turn) and defend yourself.
Re-read “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” When you get to the end, start again. That was my standard fare when I proctored my exams. Over the years I must have read it at least twenty times, and every time was worthwhile.
My big time sink lately is Kakuro. Try Kakuro.com or the washington post Kakuro page.
wasting time…proctoring exams…? Does not compute.
You need to diligently watch those little cheaters like a freakin hawk. No fun for you!
Ahhh, we (=physics majors) used to play Scorched Earth when I was an undergrad ~7-8 years ago. And in high school, my brother and I used to play a BASIC game called “Gorillas” where the tanks were replaced with crudely drawn gorillas and the projectiles were explosive bananas.
It’s good to see that some things never change 🙂
Asad: Scorched Earth was our game of choice in high school, ~15 years ago …
Pocket tanks sounds a lot like the gorillas game that used to come with qbasic on windows. Surely somebody else here played that one.
Darw1n.net posted about pocket tanks 3.5 years ago. It’s nice to hear that there is a revivial going on.
About 3 years ago a yahoo game called Rocket Mania stopped all productivity in the CS lab in Olin for about 3 weeks.
Grad,
Not only can you look two comments above you, but I remember playing that game in the computer lab in high school about 10 years ago. Good times.
If you want a more physics-ish version, there was an old game – I think it was called Grav Wars. Two ships shooting at each other, surrounded by ‘stars’. You shot at the other guy, but your shot would get deflected if it got too close to a star. It was almost too tricky to be a good teaching tool (predicting what your shot would look like was almost impossible). That said, I don’t know if it’s still around and/or Java-ized, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were.
stick cricket kept me going while writing up. I know nothing about cricket, but this 4 button game got me hooked.
http://www.stickcricket.com/game.php
Scott:
This game? Sounds like a derivative of Spacewar!.