Project idea: Sand game

[akuchling]

Barb suggested a mobile app idea. There's a toy that consists of a glass box or tube filled with sand or beads. There are also slightly larger figures buried in the sand -- say, a shark, an anchor, and a ship. You play by shaking the sand until one of the figures comes to the top, and then you can check it off your list. Repeat until you've found all three figures. Her suggestion is a mobile app to play this game: shake your phone until all the stuff comes up.

I think this could probably be done as an JavaScript + canvas app. It could either simulate the physics of sand in detail -- searching for 'sand simulation' turns up papers such as http://robotica.uv.es/~ignacio/papers/EG08/short2054.pdf -- or just fake it like a slot machine, by randomly picking how often a target figure appears and how much of it is visible, and then rendering the screen accordingly.