Finger Phyics Ignores Actual Physics

I just checked out the “finger physics” iphone app and ran into these “magnetic” blocks pretty fast. The idea is that like-colored blocks repel each other, and red blocks stick to blue blocks.

The problem with this is that each block only has one pole, and is therefore, effectively a Magnetic Monopole which isn’t actually known to exist anywhere in the universe.

Couldn’t these blocks have been called “electrostatic blocks” and been just as fun, if not more? I guess, since the game is in 2-d, we don’t know if maybe the other sides of the magnetic poles are just behind what we can see.

I know that this isn’t a standardized educational tool, but I think the programmers could have done a little bit of a better job maybe asking a physicist to review their app before they went ahead and created a runaway hit.