Andy Hall

@testtubegames

Game Developer behind TestTubeGames. Enjoy building, finding, and sharing cool science through games / toys / simulations. No AI. My games: Other games I love: he/him

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Andy Hall@testtubegames· 13d

One step smaller and, well, you get this. (Seems like it's probably going to be a Pluto-mass black hole for quite a while...)

Collectible card titled "1 second of Hawking radiation from a pluto-mass black hole". Image of a cartoon black hole under it.
Text: There's oddly not much at this mass scale... so I guess it's time to reveal what really happened to Pluto.
The mass is listed as 2.3 x 10^-29 kg.
It's listed as being card 3 of 32, and legendary.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· 14d

Almost there, now! If we go even smaller than that admittedly confusing entry... we come to one of my personal favorite particles... the Down Quark. Seen for the first time here, isolated from any other quarks.

Collectible card titled Down Quark. Image of a cartoon Down Quark under it.
Text: Since they're always confined to groups, can I really talk about an individual quark's mass? Apparently, I can!
The mass is listed as 8.4 x 10^-30 kg.
It's listed as being card 2 of 32, and common.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· 15d

And with that, we finally come to the smallest (er, lowest mass) step of our journey: the electron. Thank you for traversing the universe with me. Continue smaller only at your own risk! Want to learn more? My favorite related links: testtubegames.com/higgs101/?p=...

Collectible card titled Electron. Image of an electron under it.
Text: The first stop on our journey of masses, this tiny particle is most commonly known an an anti-positron.
The mass is listed as 9.1 x 10^-31 kg.
It's listed as being card 1 of 32, and common.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· 22d

An interesting game about making Interaction Diagrams... the controls took some getting used to (as a clue, try holding w, x, shift) FeynCraft by scriptering scriptering.itch.io/feyncraft

A simply drawn feynman diagram over what looks like graph paper. Many buttons along the top and bottom for selecting various particles to add, and at the top it lists the goal interaction you're trying to draw. The interaction is shown completed in the main part of the screen, with an electron and positron interacting via a photon.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 11

Oooh, pretty gravity... DustSim by Kodub kodub.itch.io/dustsim

Dark background with thousands of green and orange-ish particles swirling round what looks like two masses. Makes for a very wavy, loopy pattern.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 10

I love the conceit of this little simulator. Here's a Van de Graaff machine on a table. Hit the buttons and play with it. The results may be... surprising. Or not. rareal.itch.io/van-der-graaf

Picture of a science classroom with a 3D model of a Van de Graaff generator on the table.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 9

20 masses set up in a symmetric orbit. A bit of chaos ensues. ("Imperfections in the sim?" "Microscopic, microscopic.") You can run it in GSim yourself here: tinyurl.com/yck522nt

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 9

It's so cool that you can explore many museums virtually these days. Like here, right now, you can go visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History! naturalhistory2.si.edu/vt3/NMNH/?st... Dinosaurs, neat. Wait... what's that off to the side -- a paleobotany section!?! Sign me up!

Picture from inside a natural history museum with exhibits in a large room, in the distance a sauropod fossil stands near trees. Around the edge of the screen are navigation tools for exploring the space.

Picture from inside a natural history museum with one dinosaur fossil eating another? Cool! Around the edge of the image are navigation tools.

A picture of a ginkgo leaf fossil. You can even zoom up on it and it has a little scale to help you figure out the size of things. It's like you're there!

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 8

I've already got /my/ tickets!

Movie poster style image. In the middle, a cartoony scene of a big red letter H wearing glasses, surrounded by a lot of particle tiles and small blue characters.
Text:
Agent Higgs 2: Escape from the Standard Model.
Time for Another Run
Directed by TestTubeGames, starring Top Quark and Higgs Boson with Electron, Neutron, Proton, Photon, Pion, Positron, Muon, W's, Z, Neutrinos, Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Gluons, Tau, Bottom, and special guests Sigma One, Sigma Two, Sigma Three, Sigma Four, Sigma Five.
Coming August 28, 2026

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jul 4

Happy Discover Day to the Higgs boson! Captured just 14 years ago, can you believe it? So get out there and break some electroweak symmetry in honor of the holiday.

Colorful cartoon image of the Higgs boson with glasses looking sad while wearing a party hat and surrounded by confetti. Surrounding him in shadow are five blue cartoon character with various expressions - one is happy and holding cupcakes. In the upper corner text says: Trapped 14 Years!

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 23

The Higgs boson was discovered just a month after my last game came out... ...uh oh. (Give Higgs a partner, he said, what's the worst that could happen, he said.)

Cartoon scene of Agent Higgs and a mysterious figure with their face obscured by a hat both standing in front of a locked door. The figure is saying "It's time for lights out"

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 23

I drew this one, (slightly different meson, but same idea) which I *think* makes more sense? But again, not sure if there's some handwavy element to this all that I'm missing. Where it's okay to have the overall pion go horizontally, even if the component quarks point the wrong way?

Feynman diagram of the quark representation of a proton on the left and neutron on the right interacting via a down/antidown quark pair. In this version, basically it's a down that turns into an antidown... except the line points backward in time instead of forward, meaning the arrows *do* line up.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 23

Saw this nuclear force diagram on Hyperphysics - and I *think* it's wrong? But I hesitate... Basically, the up quark turns into an antiup, then back into an up? So it breaks the standard rules for diagrams. I just don't if this is some accepted "close enough" approximation for quarks/gluons/pions?

Line drawings of feynman diagrams - in which a neutron and proton interact via a negative pion. The right hand side shows the hadron-view, as I just described. The left side shows the quark view, where the proton is an up-down-up, for instance. In the middle there is a crossing over of quarks (a down and antiup) between the two sides, which is marked to represent the pion. The antiup, however, connects to two up fermion lines on either side, and all are heading in the same temporal direction... which means the arrows are opposed to one another.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 18

A nice electric field simulation that lets you put charges around and see the various fields/potentials. Created by folks at Ithaca College icphysweb.z13.web.core.windows.net/simulation.h...

Ten red positive charges arranged in an H shape with little arrows pointing away from them, two zero-charge particles are in the middle area of the H. There are also red equipotential lines encircling the H in concentric shapes.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 17

Fascinating simulation play around with that connects to fingerprints, leopard spots, and more. Reaction Diffusion by greyscott pmneila.github.io/jsexp/graysc...

Thick organic yellow/orange lines weaving around one another in roughly the shape of an H.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 16

Agent Higgs 2: Escape from the Standard Model Particle physics has never been so cartoony. Well, aside from Agent Higgs 1. ...and all those physics comic books. Oh and have you seen particle zoo's plushies? I'm getting off track. Here's a trailer for my game.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 16

Such a nice, simple use of a simulation. Which way would an iceberg float? It's surprisingly counterintuitive -- and really doesn't match the classic meme-y drawings. Iceberger by Joshua Tauberer joshdata.me/iceberger.html

Simple white H shape floating in blue water with a little tiny sun in the upper corner of the sky. The H is tilted about 20 degrees to the right. Minimalistic 2D drawings style.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 9

Or just get extra creative with the summer ~slide~ sinerider.com

Thumbnail from the game Sine Rider, which shows a cartoon snowy slope that seems to have a somewhat regular sine wave to it. There are a pair of tiny characters riding a sled on the curve, and at the bottom there's a math equation representing the curve. Underneath a description: "A game where you use math equations to create the proper slopes for sledding. Created by Chris Walker."

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jun 8

I host a website with a bunch of links to science games/simulations all across the web. Last month I noticed a spike in traffic... checked, and indeed - science AP tests had just wrapped up. Ha. So for any beleaguered teachers who don't know about it yet... thescienceplayground.com

Website titled The Science Playground, subtitle a list of interesting links. There are six thumbnails visible below, sorted into a grid. Many have basic planet images and orbit lines, showing off simulations. The few shown with titles are: "Gravity Simulator - Huffman", "Black Hole Explorer", and "Orbit". There are search options and dropdowns on the left hand side, one of which is set to "gravity"

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Apr 29

How do photons *pull*? Can we picture it like a game of catch? I do a deep dive into a question that has always bothered me in this month's blog post. Come for the confusion, stay for the even more confusion. testtubegames.com/blog/how-do-...

An interaction diagram, with an interaction that has a proton and electron going in, and a proton an electron coming out. In the middle, a photon line connects them.

Two characters on skateboards, the left marked negative, the right marked positive. The one on the left has now thrown the bowling ball to the one on the right. They are both moving towards one another. They left one says "Here I come!" The right one says "How?!"

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Mar 12

It was time. Feel like sites need to be pretty explicit one way or the other right now... because playing detective is a waste of all of our times. (And if you use it, I guess you should be proud, right? I'm to understand you think it's okay? So like, what's the issue?)

Top of the TestTubeGames website with a new icon circled. It's AI in a crossed out red circle. I've highlighted it by circling it for this screenshot.

Other than that, the image has the title TestTubeGames, Bringing Science to Life.

Next to the "no AI" button are several other social icons, for Mastodon, Youtube, and internal links for Home and Games.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Mar 10

A peek at Agent Higgs 2 -- my particle physics puzzle game coming out this summer... testtubegames.com/blog/

Title Screen of a game with a shadowy cartoon style.

Title: Agent Higgs 2: Escape from the Standard Model.

Underneath is a scene of a red H wearing groucho-marx glasses hiding among some wooden crates and particles. The particles shown are proton, electron, and muon, all drawn as colorful tiles with letters.

Along the left are several UI buttons drawn as file folders: Play, Editor, and About

Cartoony scene of a tall billboard shown outside among grassy hills.

There's a happy blue character wearing a red jester's hat, holding out their arms forming a rainbow filled with particles: electron, muon, tau, proton, neutron.

The top says: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Particle Physics.

The bottom says: Now including the Higgs Boson.

The area that would show the Higgs boson is mysteriously missing. The mysterious dark figure in a hat is nearby on a ladder, holding a roll of paper.

Screenshot of a level in the game, titled Electric-8. It's grid-based, with a white floor and wooden tiles forming walls. There are two protons and an electron, with a photon pulling on an electron and proton.

Agent Higgs is a tile at the bottom of the level. A mysterious figure wearing a hat is near the top, saying:

"The scientists caught you last time...
...but with my help you'll never get trapped again!"

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Feb 25

New game posted at Universe & More! What?! Magnetism Mini Golf. Go give it a play - perfect for some magnetic puzzle fun, and GREAT fore students. universeandmore.com/magnetism-mi...

3 by 3 grid representing a minigolf course with a cartoon flag in the lower left, and a golf club to the right. Four tiles have little dotted-circles in them representing magnetic fields, and there is a red ball with a curved path shown behind it. The ball has gone around the golf course, curving 90 degrees every time it passes through one of the magnetic fields.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Feb 25

Which is harder to simulate - Dark Matter or Gas? Find out in my latest blog post, which includes pretty animations and also a sneak peek at a sim you can run yourself?! testtubegames.com/blog/dark-ma...

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Jan 14

Last chance* to join the TestTubeGames newsletter! Project updates, deep dives into the science behind my games, and links to other cool science to explore online. Delivered right to you, and not surrounded by a feed of current events. mailchi.mp/d92658cb25c4... *what?

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Dec 17

Time for an addendum to The Science Playground's "About" page. I think this just about covers it.

Header: No AI
Worth writing it in its own category here. In general, AI is a vehicle for evil and misinformation. So I think it should be kept as far away from education as possible. As an added bonus, AI harms creators – and sharing creations and supporting creators is the whole reason this site exists. So. No thank you.

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Dec 17

When you look around a creatives discord server and realize folks have only been sharing AI-related creations for months... Hope somebody who needs this message finds it.

Discord server message, small cartoon character icon, message written by andy. "That's that, then. If there are any folks that are against using AI and in the creator space, feel free to track me down elsewhere. You're not alone, and I'd love to support your stuff."

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Oct 7

A box of gas (blue) + dark matter (green), now with a smoother distribution at the start. (gravity + pressure + viscosity, 16k particles, periodic 2d)

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Oct 3

And here we are at about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The universe has cooled enough that neutral atoms are common, and loose charges are rarer. Photons can finally travel in mostly straight lines. Some of them traveled in mostly straight lines for billions and billions of years, in fact!

Andy Hall@testtubegames· Oct 3

As the universe expands, it cools. Some neutral atoms (grey) are able to form briefly -- and these don't scatter the photons as much. Still the photons get bounced around. (This is at about ~360,000 years after the Big Bang.)