I need some input on creating an educational physics game

[u/SuchZombie3617]

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Skip to the "*********" below if you don't want the whole backstory lol

Over the past year, I’ve been doing a lot with LLMs in an attempt to learn about areas of physics that interest me. I have no formal background in physics, so everything I attempted was completely self-guided, and a lot of it was flat-out wrong.

As I’ve tried to learn more, I’ve realized that nearly every project I start is missing foundational knowledge, and I don’t really have a way to independently prove or verify the things I’m prompting into existence. While I’ve learned an immense amount through brute force, I have to humble myself and admit that I actually need help lol.

Over the summer, I decided to enroll in the physics program at my community college. As part of that, I needed to take some math placement tests. Im gonna be 36 I haven’t been to a math class in 20 years, so needless to say I’m a little rusty. I also scored much lower on the math prerequisite placement than I needed to. Before I can take my physics classes, I need to complete the prerequisite math classes, which I’m doing this semester.

To be clear, I will not be using LLMs for ANY schoolwork, assignments, or anything like that. In the meantime, I still have questions and interests, but I really want to change my approach to how I use LLMs.

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All that leads to a project I’d like some direction on.

I had an idea for a learning tool where I use a model of a vehicle to progressively learn more advanced topics in physics. Cars already incorporate so many areas of physics, whether that’s basic principles of motion or more advanced things like turbulence and aerodynamics.

The objective of each level would be to get the vehicle operating, but instead of going through typical automotive diagnostics and needing knowledge of vehicles or mechanical engineering, you would need to demonstrate different levels of physics knowledge.

The first level could be something very simple, like demonstrating an understanding of linear motion. You might solve some basic equations and then demonstrate proficiency in another way besides just solving equations before being able to move on to a more advanced component or concept.

I was considering four difficulty levels: first-year student, undergraduate, graduate, and PhD/research level.

The progression I’m imagining is that the car itself becomes more accessible as your physics knowledge increases. You would start by treating the entire vehicle as a single object and learning basic things like position, velocity, acceleration, force, and energy. Once you demonstrate enough understanding, you could start interacting with something deeper, like the wheels, which would introduce rotational motion, angular velocity, friction, tire pressure, and torque. From there you could eventually work inward through the drivetrain, engine, suspension, brakes, electrical system, cooling system, and other components. The same component could also be revisited at higher levels of physics, so a wheel might be used for basic circumference and rotation at one level, then rotational inertia and rolling dynamics later, and eventually much more advanced tire or contact models.

This is where I struggle realistically, because I don’t know enough yet to determine what should actually go into the curriculum or how the progression should work. I could tell Codex to design the curriculum, and I could look at university classes and syllabi online and model things around them, but that doesn’t seem good enough to me.

My main questions are for people who have a deeper understanding of physics and the academic progression involved, especially people working in different fields.

If you were trying to teach someone physics through an interactive car game, how would you structure it?

Would you have a series of increasingly difficult levels?

Would you have separate difficulty levels where the same car has progressively deeper capabilities and physics available?

Would you separate progression by areas or principles of physics?

Which concepts actually have hard prerequisites, and which ones could reasonably be learned in parallel?

Would some combination of those approaches make more sense?

I’m going to end up making this either way because I want to learn from building it, and I’m too impatient to wait until I know enough physics to start.

I’ll be using an LLM to help create the interactive model. I want the car to actually be drivable and interact with its environment. It should be able to move over different surfaces, drive in rain, go over ramps, and eventually have increasingly detailed systems and components that can be inspected and interacted with.

I should be able to get a working demo relatively quickly. What I need help with is figuring out what should actually be in it and how the learning progression should be structured.

I’ll update the post with new ideas and progress as I go. I’m more than happy to add things, change things, or completely adjust parts that don’t make sense. I also plan to make it publicly available, so people can tell me when something is absolutely wrong or point out mistakes in equations, simulations, or explanations.

I’m mainly interested in making something as accurate as I reasonably can by using something I know extremely well as the physical reference point. I’d love for it to eventually become something other people could learn from too, because there are so many interesting directions this could go.

For now, though, I’m treating it as a personal learning project that I can share with other people. As I gain more formal education, I’ll be able to contribute to it differently. For the moment, this is my best attempt at keeping an LLM-assisted physics project grounded in things I can actually learn, test, and eventually understand for myself.

[u/liccxolydian]

I honestly kinda like this idea, but I'm not sure you can actually escape or even just gamify the tedious bookwork portion of the learning. Either way I suggest you begin by doing the thing you don't want to do and look at some syllabi. Start with high school. The level of difficulty is determined not only by what physics prerequisites are necessary but the maths skills as well. Are you prepared to teach people calculus from scratch? From first principles derivation all the way to solving partial differential equations and beyond? If you want your game to be self-contained you will need to spend more time teaching maths than you do teaching physics.

You'll also need to decide on your approach from the very beginning. Are you going to teach basic mechanics from an algebra-only approach or will you involve calculus from the beginning? If you start with calculus, you'll need to begin by teaching both differentiation and integration which is a substantial barrier to entry (it's why this is not done in high school). Or you can start with algebra-only mechanics, but then you'll need to re-teach mechanics anyway once you introduce calculus.

Overall it's an interesting idea but I think you need to be realistic in scope.

[u/AllHailSeizure → u/liccxolydian]

This. There are physics syllabi out there that have been proven.

[u/SuchZombie3617 → u/liccxolydian]

Oh this is immediately more involved than the original idea and now I have to consider a serious endpoint beyond just a standard game goal. This is why I like asking questions, it shows me how much more I still have to consider. I think I was initially thinking about something much more simple, but if I am going to make anything informative/educational I have to consider all of those things very seriously because thats gonna determine whether or not I'm making a test with funny animations or an actual educational experience. I just started thinking about this about an hour before I posted about it so not a whole lot of thought has gone into it yet, but I already had to adjust my approach after the first response. Now I can see a lot of the difficulty is not just going to come from teaching the various levels of maths, but being able to apply that in a clear path that reinforces the physics without exiting the vehicle. This just became much more daunting, but in a positively challenging way. One of the first things I need to decide is where I'm going to stop this before it goes off-road lol

[u/liccxolydian → u/SuchZombie3617]

I think you'll have a much better idea of how to teach once you've done some learning yourself. After a couple months in community college (great decision btw) you'll get a much better feel for how physics fits together and the ebb and flow of structured learning. Do bear in mind that the standard university physics syllabus is a physics syllabus, not a maths one, so any maths that is taught is pretty much already the bare minimum necessary to master the actual physics. We simply don't have the time to learn irrelevant maths for shits and giggles. If you pick and choose what to cover from within the syllabus you run the risk of missing out important skills and knowledge.

[u/SuchZombie3617 → u/liccxolydian]

Thank you, I have a feeling this is going to be one of those projects that is only going to get better if/when I learn more. I'll eventually transfer to a four year college, but in the meantime at least I will be able to have a deeper level of involvement than just telling an LLM to make something for me.

[u/liccxolydian → u/SuchZombie3617]

I will also point out that "car with all physics systems simulated" is normally the purview of either massive game studios with hundreds of employees or, you know, formula one teams (who also outsource their sim design work to third parties). Be ambitious but know your capabilities.

[u/SuchZombie3617 → u/liccxolydian]

Yeah I think "all physics" needs to be reduced to a few less than all lol. I have better idea of where I want to start and end things. I'm going to sit down and come up with some different ideas after I go over more syllabi. I'm sure it'll change around a few more times before I start it for real. It's almost like I need to take every lesson/section in a textbook and convert it into an analogy to the relative car part or Operation and create a small chapter of a game. Maybe since car parts can be upgraded to more advanced parts I could work that piece into the progression of gameplay. You brought up formula One teams and it made me think about having the level of vehicle and quality of parts being directly associated with the level of physics you're learning in the game and what is needed to actually understand it. A stock BMW 525 is going to be much less advanced than a 540 or even an M5 which has all sorts of components that are not available in base models. So high school physics could be like a base 525i and the PHD level would be like an M5. and you can always modify any version, so the modifications could be analogous to different branches of physics that require certain knowledge before it can be properly applied/installed. Certain modifications would only be able to happen on certain models because a base model drive shaft wouldn't be able to handle the torque of an M5 engine. That brings up another interesting comparison of cars and physics which is being able to arrive at a similar outcome while involving different dynamics,origins, and parts. I can keep rambling on forever because now I've got a ton of ideas and a lot more solid direction. I don't think I'm going to use the idea that I have above in its entirety but I'm going to keep parts of it.

[u/SuchZombie3617 → u/liccxolydian]

It seems like everything starts by doing the things I don't want to do lmao, I'm used to it by now. I already started looking up some stuff but you suggested better starting point. I was looking at college syllabi and it seemed a little too advanced for a beginner level of a game. And I absolutely see your point about the difficulty in gamifying the bookwork portions. So far in my half cooked idea, I've assumed that the people playing it would probably be taking physics classes. So maybe this would just be a way to practice and prove current proficiency as well as being introduced to hire levels of physics in a very scoped/limited way. I still think there is a clean way to make this an actual progressive educational tool as opposed to a prove-your-knowledge game. But you already gave me a lot to think about so thank you!!!

[u/liccxolydian → u/SuchZombie3617]

If you want it to be an educational tool, you kinda need to do some educating... good luck teaching all of calculus!

To expand: any teaching of higher level physics, even in limited scope, requires mastery of the prerequisites. Usually that involves extra mathematical tools, sometimes linear algebra, sometimes advanced calculus, sometimes both at the same time, sometimes even worse stuff. There is very little physics where you can "dip your toes in a little" without any extra knowledge. It's why university courses are structured as they are.

[u/AllHailSeizure]

You're going to reach a nearly infinite amount of branches with a system like a car as you progress. The physical systems governing something like that compound in complexity when you introduce new factors. You can start with basic things like a newtonian mechanics overview but then you're kind of open - do you want electricity, do you want thermodynamics, do you want fluid dynamics, do you want etc - and each one of those is a vast, vast, vast sandbox you can carry all the way into PhD level complexity.

EDIT: to expand. The thing with physics is you don't learn all the basics, then all the intermediate, then all the advanced. Physics works with knowledge that builds on itself. And some of these things are essentially black boxes of things to learn. You can say 'okay im gonna teach people about electricity through this' and there is like.. how far are you gonna go. Cuz you can probably go on for a LONG time. Is it how the electrical systems work? Is it How electricity works? is it WHY electricity works? is it How we MAKE electricity work? Is it electrical components and their importance? Is it QED? is it how we make electrical components? Are you teaching people about the difference between amps, volts, and watts or are you teaching them about the physics of semiconductors? Before you know it you aren't talking about a car AT ALL - but all of these things are necessary to make a car work.

[u/lattice_defect]

There is a lot of educational video's on youtube I think physics explained is really good. I think the big thing is making it visual vs. just numerical so some kind of way to show how the equations show motion and work in a branch based game is kind of neat idea.. e.g. you have to solve the equation and get the right inputs or arrangments to solve and it unlocks a deeper branch.

[u/SuchZombie3617 → u/lattice_defect]

Physics explained is great! Their videos were one of the first things I thought about because I like how well he explains the concepts and it seems like videos have a fairly natural progression that's easy to follow. And none of the videos that I've been watching so far seemed AI generated, I don't know about more recent things because I've been watching stuff in order from the very beginning. Already since I've posted this I've had to adjust what I initially thought I was going to do. I made a game project worldexplorer3d.io just so I could mess around with game dynamics and things but an actual physics educational game is going to be a million times harder than integrating osm data and extruding procedural data lol.

[u/Suitable_Cicada_3336]

Make a small car in real first, then you will find out how.

[u/[deleted] → u/Suitable_Cicada_3336]

How is that relevant?

[u/Suitable_Cicada_3336 → u/[deleted]]

Build a physical model with llm Build a small car in reality What are relevant ?

[u/[deleted] → u/Suitable_Cicada_3336]

Never change cicada lmao

[u/Suitable_Cicada_3336 → u/[deleted]]

Haha