{"id":3090,"date":"2008-10-28T09:49:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T09:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/28\/think-like-a-videogame-physici\/"},"modified":"2008-10-28T09:49:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T09:49:36","slug":"think-like-a-videogame-physici","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/28\/think-like-a-videogame-physici\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Like a Videogame Physicist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Dot Physics (which might be the best physics blog in the world at the moment), Rhett Allain has a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.dotphys.net\/2008\/10\/physics-of-fantastic-contraption-i\/\">pair<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.dotphys.net\/2008\/10\/torque-produced-by-balls-in-fantastic-contraption\/\">posts<\/a> exploring the physics of <a href=\"http:\/\/fantasticcontraption.com\/\">Fantastic Contraption<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The posts don&#8217;t really lend themselves to excerpting, so you need to go over there and read them, but I think they&#8217;re brilliant, and deserve better than just a spot in a links dump. These may be the best example of the scientific mindset that you&#8217;ll find on a blog.<\/p>\n<p>What he does is to set out to determine whether the world of Fantastic Contraption obeys a consistent set of physical laws, by coming up with ingenious experiments to determine the relative masses of objects in the game, and their behavior under controlled circumstances. He works out the relative masses, shows that the acceleration of gravity is constant, and works out the torque generated by the rotating balls in the game.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s really an outstanding example of the scientific approach to the world, and a little like watching Galileo putter around at the dawn of classical mechanics. It also makes me wonder whether it would be possible to put this to educational uses&#8211; giving introductory physics students a version of this game, for example, and asking them to experimentally determine the parameters.<\/p>\n<p>Something to think about, in my copious spare time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Dot Physics (which might be the best physics blog in the world at the moment), Rhett Allain has a pair of posts exploring the physics of Fantastic Contraption. The posts don&#8217;t really lend themselves to excerpting, so you need to go over there and read them, but I think they&#8217;re brilliant, and deserve&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/10\/28\/think-like-a-videogame-physici\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Think Like a Videogame Physicist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,7,37,11,56,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-technology","category-video_games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}