Physical Intuition Games
Feel the physics: weight, force, balance, friction and falling objects, estimated by intuition alone.
About this category
You have been doing physics all your life without writing an equation. You know roughly how heavy a bag of flour is, how hard to push a stuck door and whether a tall stack is about to fall. The nine games in this category put numbers on that knowledge and let you train it.
Some ask for a magnitude with a logarithmic slider: Weight and Force for everyday objects and efforts, Stretch for springs and Fall Time for falling things. Others are decisions between options: Balance asks which side of a lever goes down, Friction and Strength compare materials. In Topple you estimate a tipping angle, and in Landing you predict where a throw comes down.
Facts and formulas stay hidden until the answer, so the first reaction is always your own. After each round you see the real value and the formula behind it, which is where learning happens.
The 9 Physical games
Why train this?
Physical intuition keeps us safe and efficient. We judge whether a ladder is too steep, whether a shelf will hold a load, how far a ball will go and how much effort a task will take, usually in a fraction of a second and without calculation. That is an intuitive physics engine in the brain, built from experience, and it works well for the situations you meet often.
It works less well for unfamiliar scales, such as very heavy or very light objects, long falls or odd materials. Deliberate practice with immediate feedback is the best way to extend it, and a few minutes of play can already reveal where your mental model is off.
How to improve
- Learn a few anchors by heart: a liter of water weighs 1 kg and pulls with about 10 N, a fall of 5 m takes about a second, and a right-angle lever is balanced when weight times distance is equal.
- Use ratios instead of absolute numbers. Doubling the weight doubles the force, doubling the distance doubles the torque and quadrupling the height doubles the fall time.
- On logarithmic sliders, decide first on the order of magnitude (grams, kilograms, tonnes) and only then on the digits.
- Look at your bias on the Stats page. If you tend to guess heavy things too light, push your answers up on the next round.
- When two options look close, look for the deciding variable: distance in a lever, surface type in friction, shape in a tipping block.
- Don't rush the first rounds. Accuracy improves most when you think about why you were wrong, not just that you were.