Physics Sandbox: Play With Sand, Water and Lava

What is Physics Sandbox?

A physics sandbox with nothing to win and nothing to lose, built purely for experiments. You pour sand onto the canvas with a brush, run water through it, paint lava and watch what the materials do to each other. Solid blocks can be broken apart, gas can be released, and you can even define a material of your own.

How to play

Pick a material from the side panel and hold the left mouse button to paint it onto the canvas. Right click switches the brush to an eraser. Sand pours down and piles up, liquid flows and fills gaps, lava melts whatever it touches, and gas rises. Draw solid blocks and smash them later, or set two materials side by side and watch the reaction. The panels can be dragged and shrunk, so the whole screen can become canvas. There is no end condition, only the question of how your arrangement behaves.

Controls

Tips

• Draw a bowl of sand first, then pour water in, and watch the liquid filter down through the grains.
• Touch lava straight onto water; the reaction between them is the quickest physics lesson here.
• Shrink the panels before you build anything large, and the entire screen turns into drawing space.

Frequently asked questions