Your Objective

 

By strategically activating each of four available tools, your objective is to hold the area of the purple box as close to the target area as possible for as much of the game as you can. For example, you might receive the objectives:

 

 

 

The Resizer Tool

 

In this example, the target area is too low, so let's examine the possible ways this could be increased. The primary tool available for making large-scale changes to the area of the boxes is the resizer. This can be found by clicking the image on the right hand side of the screen. Your cursor will then change to a image. This allows you to shrink or expand the black box. To shrink, click anywhere inside the black box, but outside the purple box. This will shrink the lower right corner of the black box to the position you clicked on. To expand, simply click outside the current area of the black box and it will grow to that point. As the area of the black box changes, you will see how this naturally impacts the area of the purple box. The resizer tool can make dramatic changes to the system, however, it can only be used once every 40 seconds. Thus, you will need to rely on other tools to tweak the system as you are waiting for it to recharge.

 

The Teleporter Tool

The next most powerful tool in your arsenal is the teleporter tool. Activate this by clicking the icon from the right hand pallet. Your cursor display will then change to a image. This will allow you to move balls from inside the purple box to outside, or vice-versa. Thus, if you wanted to increase the area of the purple box, you could teleport some of the balls from outside the purple box to the inside. Rather than pressing against the purple box, they then work to expand it. This tool, however, can only be used once every 20 seconds, so you may find it helpful to get a quick burst from the heat and cooling tools while waiting for it to recharge.

 

The Furnace and Freezer Tools

 

After clicking the image, you will get a cursor. This will create a blast around wherever you click within the game, increasing the heat of any balls in its radius by 6 pixels-per-second. Since hotter balls move faster, they will hit the walls of the purple box more often. Thus, heating balls on the inside will cause the purple box to expand, and heating balls on the outside will cause it to shrink. Using the freezer tool with the icon and the cursor will produce the opposite effect, dropping the temperature of any balls in its radius to 0 pixels-per-second. These tools recharge every five seconds, meaning you can use them relatively often. However, you will notice that their effects are only temporary as eventually the heat will transfer between all balls within the system. Thus, these tools are suitable only for making quick, temporary changes while waiting for the other tools to recharge.

 

 

How It Works

 

Collisions of balls with each other and with the walls conserve energy and momentum.  Like the walls of a balloon (and unlike the walls of a building), these walls have a mass that is large compared to a single ball (or molecule), but not so large that they are not affected by the pressure generated by collisions of many molecules with the wall.