[IAEP] something to aspire to...

[Alan Kay]

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 <aguirrea at gmail.com>
>To: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> 
>Cc: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn <alanjas at hotmail.com>; Dr. Gerald Ardito <gerald.ardito at gmail.com>; Guzmán Trinidad <guzman.trinidad at 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.bender at gmail.com>:
>> 2012/1/8 Dr. Gerald Ardito <gerald.ardito at 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.bender at 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 at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>_______________________________________________
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