Top 10 free online physics games

    Nitrome's Icebreaker is a chilly contender. Slice away the ice with your mouse to free frozen vikings and send them slip-sliding back to the longship.

    Not all physics games are about flexing your grey matter - Interactive Buddy is about battering somebody else's. Think of this as a 21st century stress ball - mash your "buddy" in the face, throw grenades at him, suck him into wormholes, etc.

    Monster Trucks Nitro is a 3D racer with tilt controls and floaty vehicle physics. Check out the trailer.

    Orbit is probably the most unusual game on the list. You've got to keep a comet ricocheting around inside the arena till the timer runs out. The comet is affected by planetary gravity, but you can use this to your advantage.

    Perfect Balance: Playground is beautiful, all tinkly glass and pastel colours. It's also a fantastic stack-the-shapes game.

    More shape stacking, but with added personality. Super Stacker 2 also features a level editor.

    Cargo Bridge has eaten through more of our leisure hours than any other game this month, with its fiddly but fascinating construction mechanics.

    Deconstruction, on the other hand, is about, um, deconstruction. Explosive deconstruction, to be exact. Drop bombs with shift and set them off with control key.

    Collider puts a bit of zap into rolling ball physics. Place positively and negatively charged orbs so that they tumble into one another and evaporate.

    Another ice game to tidy things up. Effing Hail is a perfect choice when you're kept indoors by the fits of precipitation which characterise British "summers". Blow hailstones aloft until they've swelled to building-crushing dimensions, then let 'em fall.