Game programming languages such as Game Maker handle collisions fairly
well. Unfortunately Game Maker is only available for Windows and Mac.
The sample "Superball" at
http://www.rupert.id.au/schoolgamemaker/samples3/ simulates inclined
planes and Newton's Cradle fairly well though I did need to do some
cheats in the programming.
It would be good to see similar collision checking (and high execution
speed) in one of the open source Turtle languages
Tony
Quoting Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com>:
Many years ago, Takashi Yamamiya did this in Etoys using the open
source system ODE ...
You can get lots of nice effects, etc.
But most of the physics plugins -- like ODE -- are quite opaque as
to what they are doing and how. They tend to deify Newton's laws
away from their scientific and mathematical basis into something
more like the "providential angels" that were used as explanations
before Newton.
What is needed pedagogically and epistemologically is a "Model-T"
scriptable by the children physics language that can be backed up
with a highly optimized version. This is almost doable in any of the
systems that use Turtle Geometry (Turtle Art, Etoys, Scratch, Logo,
starLogo, etc.). A key missing component in all of these systems is
really efficient collision detection (this has been done in many
video games, but is not now in the above systems). Etoys can detect
collisions, but it is both inefficient and requires even more work
to figure out what a collision actually means for particular shapes.
Cheers,
Alan
________________________________
From: Andres Aguirre <aguir...@gmail.com>
To: Walter Bender <walter.ben...@gmail.com>
Cc: iaep <iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org>; Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn
<alan...@hotmail.com>; Dr. Gerald Ardito <gerald.ard...@gmail.com>;
Guzmán Trinidad <guzman.trini...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 6:48 AM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] something to aspire to...
it will be great that the physics plugin could interact with the
turtle, I mean that if I define a polygon in some place of the screen
and then I ask the turtle to move, the turtle could interact with the
object depending on the physics properties of that object (density,
friction, etc). With butiá team we are working in a butiá simulator[1]
build as a plugin for turtle blocks, at the moment only the distance
sensor block, the grayscale sensor block and the push button block of
the butia palette are simulated, so if I dont have the robot I could
test the same program made for the robot but in a virtual world. In
this case having the turtle with more physics interaction will be
great for a more realistic simulation but also could be good to
implement virtual Rube Goldberg machines... imagine many turtles
moving in this machines at the same time ;) ....
regards
andrés
reference
[1]
http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/mediawiki/index.php/Grupo_Simulador
2012/1/8 Walter Bender <walter.ben...@gmail.com>:
2012/1/8 Dr. Gerald Ardito <gerald.ard...@gmail.com>:
What about an Activity (maybe branching from Physics) that would allow
children to build their own virtual Rube Goldberg machines?
The Physics plug in to Turtle Art might be a start.
-walter
I would be happy to help.
Gerald
2012/1/8 Walter Bender <walter.ben...@gmail.com>
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyregion/brooklyns-joseph-herscher-and-his-rube-goldberg-machines.html
-walter
--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
