Phun: a simulated physics playground

Matthew says:

Swedish graduate student Emil Ernerfeldt created the program Phun, a 2D physics playground, and has made it free to download for non-commercial use.
He demonstrates it in a zenful YouTube video, where he creates devices like cars and piston engines in seconds using simple shapes.

Download app here.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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mingo

I first heard about Phun on the gamedev.net forums a few days ago.
Here’s Emil’s original post introducing phun.
KurtMac

Echoing #5, the first thing I thought when I saw this was Crayon Physics: http://www.kloonigames.com/crayon/

My favorite part of the Crayon Physics game was the end, after beating all the levels, when they give you a blank page to play around with the physics, drawing all sorts of shapes and building all sorts of structures and watching them topple. “Phun” looks like exactly the same thing, but without the nuisance of having to play game levels to get to the sandbox! Awesome!
EtaWat

That looks awesome. I’d install it in every school there is today if I could.
hansk

This looks like another nice physics simulator.

MIT created one years ago that seems to be the parent of all these newer versions. Take a look at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7eGypGOlOc
http://icampus.mit.edu/MagicPaper/

And this nice variation:

http://www.kloonigames.com/crayon/
Clay

Wow, Phun reminds me of this addictive, awesome old Mac-based 2d physics sim that I used back in high school. I recall being disappointed that I couldn’t get a copy for my own computer.

It’s going to be a late night tonight!
Itsumishi

Haha. I haven’t had a chance to fiddle with this yet (at work) but the title is funny.
Especially if you’ve ever seen the Australian show ‘We can be heroes’.

Brilliant Show.

“Hey, you’re in the Wong Lab!”

“Hey everybody, how do you spell Fun. P-H-U-N, heh heh, Physics, Phun.”
Anonymous

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style. -Quentin Crisp
arkizzle

YAAAAAY!
zikman

aw shucks. no os x port yet
FutureNerd

Does anyone else’s old computer grind to a halt just because there’s an embedded YouTube (Flash) video on the page (not even playing)? I am having trouble scrolling or hitting the back button. My CPU meter is steady around 90% when I pause typing here.

Can we have a no-embedded-video version of BoingBoing, please?

–Steve
(600 MHz G3 Mac, OS 10.4, Camino.)
GammaBlog

I’ve been playing with this for the past week and yes it is a lot of fun. There are free programs that greatly increases your ability to create realistic simulations in Phun.

Bernd’s Phunlet Maker lets you easily make gears and polygons
http://bernd.bplaced.net/phunletmaker/

Svg2Phun2 lets you take vector graphics and convert them into Phun objects.
http://www.sakai.zaq.ne.jp/dugyj708/svg2phun_tatt/index_en.html

Inkscape is a free and open source vector graphics editor.
http://www.inkscape.org/
papercup mixmaster

Anyone else seeming to have to incredible inability to run the program? I’ve done all the things he suggests on the website (in the first round, before “if these don’t work”) and I’d rather not go screwing with config files. What gives?
stygyan

I want the MAC version!
FoetusNail

Damn I wish I was six again. The most help I had studying Optics or Static and Dynamic Physics was the TI 55 a 32 step programmable calculator. Check out the NASA Glenn Research Center’s Beginner’s Guide to Aeronautics @ http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/index.html Look for the FoilSim Java Applet, which helps illustrate flow-turning. There is so much cool stuff available for kids today.
toastandlove

This reminds me of the Powder Game, which has less actual physics and more explosions and opportunities for destruction.

http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/