PHYSICS NEWS

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Penny (The Big Bang Theory) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Big Bang Theory is an American sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom serve as executive producers on the show, along with Steven Molaro. All three also serve as head writers. It premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007.
The show is centered on five characters: roommates Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, two physicists who work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); Penny, a blonde waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon’s equally geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali. The geekiness and intellect of the four guys is contrasted for comic effect with Penny’s social skills and common sense.
Three other supporting characters have also been promoted to starring roles: Leslie Winkle, a physicist colleague at Caltech and, at different times, a lover of both Leonard and Howard who left the show after season 3; Bernadette Rostenkowski, Howard’s fiancée, who is a microbiologist and former part-time waitress alongside Penny; and Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist who joins the group after being matched to Sheldon on a dating website.

The Chipmunk Physics Engine on PSP

Videos have been uploaded on Youtube about the latest version of Chipmunk Physics engine on the Sony Playstation Portable console as the gaming trend takes a turn towards technology which combines law of physics with the excitement of gaming. It is a portable open source two dimensional rigid body physics library distributed under the MIT licence. With an independent OS and thoughtfully written in C99 by Scot Lembecke, Chimpunk is intended to be lightning fast, portable, numerically stable and easy to use.

There are different kinds of body forms such as rigid, soft and fluid which in turn have their own dynamics and physical systems. For example; the movement of water into a container is different from the movement of a rigid pot falling onto a slope. A Physics Engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of these physical systems in domains of computer graphics, video games and film.  The main uses are in video games as middleware and the simulations in this case are real time.

Chipmunk is used in hundreds of games all over the world in just about any system. This technology is used effectively by Sony to improve the usability of the portable Playstation console. The PSP games that currently use the Chipmunk physics engine are Stakker, Anti-Tetris and Brix DS. Stakker PSP is a fun game of building up and destroying towers made out of falling blocks. The motto of the game is to build up towers without letting any piece fall off and after reaching a certain height; it is to be destroyed with a projectile coming from the left for points. Anti-Tetris is a visual reproduction of Game boy Tetris and is based on the physics engine which allows the gamer to fasten and slow down the fall of the pieces at will.

With Brix DS, the objective is to remove all the bricks of grey level without dropping the dynamites to the ground. The gamer would encounter different types of bricks throughout various levels as the physics engine makes movement of the bricks realistic. Many game developers are now using the Chipmunk Physics engine to develop first person shooter games and various other games across various genres. Chipmunk seems to have opened a new door to seamless opportunities in the multi-billion dollar gaming industry.

Author Biography: This is a guest article written by Sapna, Manager at Taaza.com, an Indian horizontal site. Significant verticals include Jobs, Classifieds, News and Education.

No need to worry over Physics (CBSE)

The evaluation of AISSCE 2012 Physics started and CBSE has prepared a fool proof marking scheme which will give the students the marks they deserve.

However, those who just left the questions unanswered will be at loss; because many of the difficult questions are liberalized but only those who attempted the questions will get the benefit.

Those questions with tougher subdivisions are so evaluated that the easier portions are given more marks than the difficult portions. So, if the students attempted the easier portion and left the difficult portion, the loss is not much.

So, relax!

Your voices are heard, thanks to CBSE for paying heed to us – the teachers and students.

Related articles

• Mark Distribution in Physics for CBSE for 2013 Board Exam (AISSCE) (physicsfans.com)
• How was your AISSCE (CBSE) Chemistry Question Paper 2012? (chemistry.2lv.in)

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