game
rallain | September 13, 2008Scale of the Line Rider
First, we assume that the line rider is on Earth and for low speeds will have a free-falling acceleration of 9.8 m/s2. Next, an arbitrary distance is selected. In this case the length of the sled is chosen to be 1 LU (Linerider Unit).
The goal will be to put the linerider in a free fall (where air resistance should be able to be ignored) and determine his (it could be a she, it is difficult to tell) acceleration in LU/s2. Then we can determine the conversion factor from LU/s2 to…
rallain | September 13, 2008Part I: Introduction
http://linerider.com is a flash "game" in which the user can create tracks. A rider is then allowed to slide down these tracks. If you have not played this, I recommend you DON'T play it. It is very addicting and can consume many hours of your time (hours you would otherwise spend on Digg or surfing needlessly).
In this short report, I will analyze the physics involved in line rider. An obvious question is "why not just ask the line rider programmer?". Well, that would not be too much fun. Would it? So, there is the first reason - its fun. The second reason is to give an…
esiegel | April 19, 2008Sometimes, gravity and motion has the power to mesmerize me. I found this online game called "compulse" which was so much fun, that I spent about 90 minutes this week just playing this game until I had beaten every level on the "pro" setting. Yikes. (My score is 104 under par, 8 under pro.)
And so, in the interest of bringing it to you, I've tried to embed it into my website. Have fun playing if it works in your browser (I told you to use firefox or safari), and if you enjoy playing with the mechanics of motion as much as I do, maybe you, too, have the interest it takes to be a physicist!…