How physics are coded into video games
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Most areas of physics are described by differential equations, and there is a whole area of maths called numerical analysis which (in large part) focuses on techniques that can be used by computers to produce approximate solutions to differential equations. Most of these techniques were originally developed for use in research and engineering, but they can be easily adapted to computer games. The main differences are that (a) computer games generally need to simulate things in real time and (b) it’s not really that important if computer games are scientifically accurate. So basically you just cut a lot of corners and accept worse approximations. Nowadays, there are many off-the-shelf libraries that can do various physics calculations for games, so you generally don’t have to program any of it yourself.
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