Prim Settings

Can I get an explaination on what these are?

Locked - I know that one
Physical - ??
Temporary - ??
Phantom - I know this one as well

And the Material option, what is that for ?

Physical - Oh come on. It's not that hard to figure out what this does. It activates Physics simulation for the object in question so that it'll react realistically (well, somewhat) to collisions, gravity etc.
A few things... physical objects cannot have more than 31 prims. The minimum distance for collision calculation is 10 centimeters, so physical objects should be at least 10 centimeters away from anything else when you activate physics. If they intersect another object, they will not turn physical, and if they are very close there may be funky behavior such as the object being catapulted away or, if you turn several objects close to each other physical, they'll literally "explode"... so be careful not to unlink physical objects by accident or you'll have a lot of cleaning to do

Temporary - this makes the object in question a "temporary" object that deletes itself after a random time, usually around a minute (I think). They don't count against the prim limit of the land you're on, but there is a limit on how many of them can be on a sim before "older" ones will start being deleted.

The material option has an effect on things like friction and collision sounds... possibly other things too, I don't know. As far as I know it doesn't change the density though(i.e. two otherwise identical objects made of different materials will still have the same mass)

Obviously we are not all as clever as you. But SL is a learning curve and if you don't ask ?????

Comments like that really put me off asking questions on here.

Thread closed.

For a fun answer to your question, see http://video.tipsdr.com/item/T69RM2Z54WJ8K7RB

i agree that this was sort of insulting. i suppose you didn't mean it to be.

Shipper, don't be put off.