Description Phun is an educational, entertaining and somewhat (!) addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion. It is part of our long term mission to bring visual physics based simulation to the masses.
In Phun we combine several ambitions: • A science center installation for Umevatoriet that also can be used before and after a visit. • To make physics fun. Even though Phun certainly can do "falling bricks" it can also do alot more! • To promote interest in science and technology among kids, youth, students and most likely adults too... "- We wants students!" • A high level of interactivity and a simple and efficient interface that encourages creativity and exploration (this is why we choose 2D over 3D) rather than efficiency and usage patterns influenced by the tool • To enable learning using a constructionist approach, pretty much like Netlogo for complex systems • To use fast and stable cutting-edge methods for multi-physics simulation and solvers (i.e. Phun is also used to for testing and developing new simulation methods and to produce scientific results) Future work will include lots of added funtionality and optimization, on-line repositories of simulation components and scenes. A research project will look at the learning aspects of Phun.
The development of Phun was carried out as a MSc project by Computing Science student Emil Ernerfeldt supervised by Kenneth Bodin, HPC2N/VRlab.
