Second Life Physics

Hi,

I have just got published a paper 'Second Life Physics: Virtual, Real or Surreal?' in Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, v. 2, n. 1, (special issue: Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in Virtual Worlds), Apr. 2009: https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/383/455.

In this work, I try to show that Second Life Physics is a 'hyper-real' one, but it's also a golden teaching opportunity for Physics Teaching, in accordance with Papert's never implemented proposal.

Comments are welcome.

'Grats!

You should swing by Andrew Lindens office hour and chat with him about it - he's the LL physics guru and might be interested/happy to hear that you've done this..

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_hours

erm.. i dont think SL physics engine is so great once i created a perpetual motion wheel.
i mean using SL for learning Physics? i wouldn't recommend it
im gona read your paper tho cause im very interested

Oooh.. Now there's a toy I'd like to see. I've done working phys gears, chains, and a ball+mousetrap/chain reaction demo. But, nothing that behaved on it's own by simply using the phys engine. (^_^)

I've written quite a few scripts that push the limits of SL physics, including things like an avatar canon that could launch you to an altitude of two billion meters, or a "physical teleporter" to move you precisely from one point to another four kilometers away in a matter of seconds. The SL physics system would be useful for teaching how to perform experiments, perhaps to explore how it differs from real world physics, but not for something so straightforward as physics itself.

Excuse my bad english. I am french.

EPR experience shows a non locality principle. Quantum mecanics tends to be an informationnal physics. In LindenWorld, Schödinger constant is higher. This is the first idea.

Le second idea is entropy does not grow in SL. Time is SL is not a thermodynamical time.

In Gödel Universe, there are closed universe lines where entropy does not grow.

In a more advanced way of thinking, SL physics, without matter, could be the physics before the big bang. Le big bang is the beginning of growing entropy.

I think it should be absolutely possible to teach physics in SL, in a way where physics from Gödel could be seen active in SL.

My head just exploded.

Sure it does. Mass/energy is not conserved in SL, and energy is continually renewed but that doesn't mean it isn't entropic. There is a continual net loss of *information* within SL, since script execution and physical motion is not reversible, and the history of an object (whether a vehicle, agent, physical prim, or scripted prim) can not be recovered by merely reversing its world-lines, as it would in a non-entropic universe.

The flow of information in SL is continually renewed by new information delivered from our universe. It's like the *apparent* localized entropy reversal on Earth that's only possible because it's driven by the vastly greater entropy-loss of the Sun.