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Simple, Portable Physics Simulations

Posted by timothy on from the for-kids-and-other-humans dept.

ttsiod writes "I want to 'lure' my nephews/nieces towards Science and Engineering (to whatever extent that's possible, in the age of consoles). To that end, I have coded simple physics simulations, like falling snow, exploding fireworks, and 1D/2D wave simulations. My efforts are here, in the form of portable SDL mini-programs (GPL code, compilable under Windows, Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD, Mac OS/X and basically every OS with GCC and SDL). Try them out, and do offer any suggestions on other programs that can trigger scientific interest in young minds. Myself, I am teaching them Python, so that they can code 'fireworks' on their own."

3 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:wot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    the progress bar when windows xp boots up

  2. Consider revising intro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I want to 'lure' my nephews/nieces

    I'm glad the rest of that sentence ended up better than it started out.

  3. Re:FreeBASIC by Lorkki · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey, if it's old-fashioned stuff you find t3h l33t, why not teach the kids Brainfuck? It's essentially the same language as P", devised by the man Böhm himself in 1964, way before all of this pish posh about how to conveniently build non-trivial programs, but also including the modern concepts of input and output. Make no mistake, however - with only eight operations to choose from, it's about as simple as you can get, and many a programmer will attest that it's fun to play with!