How to implement a physics engine?

Where does one start when writing a rigid body physics engine?

• As someone who has not studied high-level maths, I have a hard time going through the academic papers with the theory behind rigid body physics. Are there more practical examples of simple rigid body physics out there? 2D is fine.

• Answer:

  The best way is to start with spheres and then try to get behaving realistically. This side project will give you a good context of what needs to happen. Once you get that, move on to David Eberly's book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Physics-Second-David-Eberly/dp/0123749034 Another path is to reverse engineering an open source physics engine. You can learn a lot by studying http://www.box2d.org/ This path will take you into high-level maths, and you should feel comfortable studying once you have a ground floor understanding.