It’s 08h00 on a Monday morning, so how better to welcome the week than with some complex physical graphs and equations explaining the world’s most popular mobile gaming app, Angry Birds. Ready? Let’s go! (Ka-kaaw!)

Angry Birds is a perfect way to kill a couple of minutes (read: a couple of hours) of dead time between other things you probably should be doing. What’s more, it’s one of the most unmistakeable games out there – with merely a tinny screech and tinkle of broken glass, everyone knows you’ve just blasted those damn green pigs to kingdom come. It’s a unifying experience.

Taking things a little further, a friendly science geek named Rhett Allain has spent an alarming amount of time describing the behaviour of the Angry Birds through graphs and scientific formulae, trying to ascertain the secrets behind the movements of the birds in flight, which should allow players to lay waste to the piggy targets with perfect precision, or so he says.

Here’s an example from his analysis of the flight of the yellow bird, which he turned to the Google Chrome version of Angry Birds to analyse (also a sneaky use of work computer, in this correspondent’s opinion).

His analysis of the wood-smashing yellow bird is wide ranging, from tracking the x and y velocity of the bird before and after the tap which sends it bulleting into the target.

To a graph plotting the vertical acceleration versus the  final velocity angle during the bird’s path into piggy destruction.

Gripping, if migraine-inducing stuff for a Monday morning. Here’s a summary of his findings for the yellow bird, you can use around the office:

It appears that when you tap the angry yellow bird, two things can happen. First, it increases its speed to 30 m/s (in the same direction that it was going). Second, if its velocity is greater than 20°; below the horizontal the vertical acceleration will be lower than 9.8 m/s².

Rhett promises more Angry Birds analysis in the future, because hey, what is the story with that new green toucan in Angry Birds Seasons?! Science, we summon thee!

[Source: Wired.com]