# Visual Physics: Discovering Physical Laws from Videos

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.11893 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11893/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 27 Nov 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [NewtonGen: Physics-Consistent and Controllable Text-to-Video Generation via Neural Newtonian Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21309/) (2025)
- [Neural Material Adaptor for Visual Grounding of Intrinsic Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08257/) (2024)
- [Generative Physical AI in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10928/) (2025)
- [Neural Implicit Representations for Physical Parameter Inference from a Single Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14030/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Video Enhances Physical Fidelity in Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20822/) (2025)
- [MASIV: Toward Material-Agnostic System Identification from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01112/) (2025)
- [Synthetic Data in Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03243/) (2023)
- [Deltaynamics: Language-Based Representation for Inferring Rigid-Body Dynamics From Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20576/) (2026)
- [Uncovering Zero-Shot Generalization Gaps in Time-Series Foundation Models Using Real-World Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26347/) (2025)
- [PhySimCode: A Benchmark and Evaluation Method for Physics Video to Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15722/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we teach a machine to discover the laws of physics from video streams. We assume no prior knowledge of physics, beyond a temporal stream of bounding boxes. The problem is very difficult because a machine must learn not only a governing equation (e.g. projectile motion) but also the existence of governing parameters (e.g. velocities). We evaluate our ability to discover physical laws on videos of elementary physical phenomena, such as projectile motion or circular motion. These elementary tasks have textbook governing equations and enable ground truth verification of our approach.