One of the most amazing things I discovered on the internet is this truly incredible 2D simulator called Phun. Phun is an educational, entertaining piece of software for designing and creating 2D simulations in a cartoony world. With heavy visual physics based simulations and infinite possibilities this ingenious piece of software can lead to endless hours of entertainment. It’s a simple process of creating a scene and building your own structures, vehicles, mechanics and bringing them to life.

The basics are quite easy to pick up you start off with a blank canvas, from there you draw the pieces to create your objects and then assign various properties to each. One of the most entertaining and educational simulator is the “Liquify” property, this turns what ever you have selected into liquid which then adds a whole new level of interaction to your simulation. The “Liquify” property should be used in small amounts depending on your computers specs, too much water can really slow down the simulation if overused.

Phun Tech Demo

From an education point of view this is a very useful tool to teach the basics of general physics and interaction with objects. Just spending a few minutes with my son he could visually interpret the simulations on the screen, I can see this application being developed further and hopefully being used as an educational app for schools. Swedish graduate student Emil Ernerfeldt created the program Phun, a 2D physics playground, and has made it free to download for non-commercial use.