[sugar] Physics -- Newtonian mechanics.. for kids!

[Brian Jordan]

Hi friends!

Physics is a physics playground for the XO currently being written by
myself and Alex Levenson. We hope it will be a fun tool for playing
with and learning physical concepts, and that the work of the
Physics/Elements teams can be used as a backend for making all
activities fun and interactive.

Get it at:
http://dev.laptop.org/~bjordan/Physics-0.2.xo (click in Browse to install)

Join the fight against everything other than Physics!

Wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics
IRC: irc.freenode.net #olpc-physics
     We are having a meeting at 6:30pm EST today on #sugar
(irc.freenode.net) with key XO-physicists. Join us!
Git: http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=activities/physics

Physics currently supports:
- Creating: triangles, boxes, circles
- Drawing: polygons, "magic pen" shapes
- Grabbing objects
- Connecting objects with joints
- Destroying objects with a fun to use red path of destruction

Physics currently uses a default Earth-style (pointing downward)
gravity, friction, size-based masses and a set of colors which are
randomly picked when an object is created. We are working on
simple-to-use contextual menus for modifying and visualizing these
parameters in the activity.

We are planning to add many other tools and toys in Physics, and
encourage suggestions (drawings/diagrams!), bug reports and code
contributions from other developers.

Physics (by way of Elements and pyBox2D) uses the open source 2D C++
physics engine Box2D2 as a back end, which has a lot of functionality
that we haven't implemented yet.

Cheers,
Brian Jordan
3D intern trapped in a 2D world