Hi Rob @modelmonkey ,
That would be done with Rigid Body Physics, if I understand what you want correctly.
There are tons of tutorials for that. I can recommend for instance Ryan King Art’s Rigid Body Physics for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lctjzasiy64
But also on CGCookie: Chapter 4 of the Fundamentals of Dynamics : https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-dynamics