Throw the same ball as hard as you can, and that dog or child will try to defend against it or dodge, instinctively understanding complex calculations of velocity and potential impact. Gently toss a ball to a dog or a small child, and he or she will catch it without the faintest conscious understanding of acceleration, momentum and gravity. Yet the brain seems to understand this science at a basic level. Instead, thinking of physics conjures nightmarish flashbacks of high school memorization. And while some folks can understand and even “speak” math at the level where nuance and beauty emerge (somewhere around integral calculus), a lot of us can’t. The problem with physics for many people is that it has always been explained in the language of mathematics. What it will test, in knee-slapping and grin-inducing fashion, is your mind. It will not test your reflexes or eye-hand coordination. If you don’t consider thinking hard to be an entertainment experience, Portal 2 is not for you. Or you could play Portal 2, the achingly brilliant new game from the Valve Corporation that wrings more fun out of physics than all of the shoot-’em-ups in the world. Physics - the basic behavior of this particular reality -can be beautiful.
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