My kids have been playing this game for months at school and I really only sat down to have a good look at it this week and found to my surprise that THE POWDER TOY was both a fun game and great educational opportunity for students to learn about chemical reactions.

Kids love to blow things up which is essentially what Powder is all about but it goes a great deal deeper than simply allowing students the opportunity to play around with many "powdery" pixels of diverse natures, each having different simulated physical and chemical properties.

Some fall faster than others, a few are "solid" and hang in mid-air, etc. A good number of them are flammable, so all you high-school chemistry students who just want to see things blow up should get hooked on this game pretty easily. = ) Almost every substance has a special quality when thrown together with another: for example, water solidifies magma; thunder electrifies metal; torch burns what hits it but is dissolved by water; and the infamous virus eats through and overruns all others, eventually turning back into the first material it came in contact with. Searching for all the unique reactions is part of the entertainment.

As you can see there is plenty here for your casual gamer to hard core science geek to get something from POWDER. I would recommend it to boys especially looking for something a little different.

Here is the latest version of Powder Toy for Windows

Here is the latest version of Powder Toy for Mac