So, here is one of the models that is in the curriculum models of NetLogo models
library. So you go to the File Models library and you go to Curricular model,
there is a number of different curriculum evolution chemistry, gas particles,
material design, probability etc etc. I was actually involved in some of the
evolutionary work, so I am going to go down to "Bug Hunt Camouflage", which is my
personal favorite ones and the one I brought up. In this one, what we have done
is this is a tool that is meant to teach how evolution works, right?
So we have these agents over here which are the different bugs and what we are
going to have is, we are going to have children kind of go through and click on
the ones they can see and what that is going to do is select over time from ones
that camouflaged themselves while against this background and you are
going to see that show up. We hit "go" and our cursor changes to a hawk and
we can start to click on the different bugs that we can see and over time you
will notice they start to favor certain hues, they start to favor certain colors
that blend in a little bit better, either red or green in this particular landscape.
And I am actually running out of the ones I can even see right now. You can actually
hit the flash button to kind of make them
show up. There is a red one up there that is hard to see for instance. Oh, this one
is pretty easier to see, so we can get rid of some of these. But even those ones are
even starting to blend in pretty well.
This helps to teach using the basic principles of Agent-Based Modeling, how
evolution actually works, that we have these selective pressures to kind of
evolve animals to develop mechanisms that allow them to avoid detection.
So that is one example of how NetLogo is being used and Agent-Based modeling is
being used to teach children to this day.
So, here I have one of the models from the Gas Lab curriculum. This is one of my
favorite ones and it was being developed while I was at
the Center for Connected Learning,
working on the NetLogo development team and you can see by the way if you are ever
interested, there is a bunch of comments and developments to how this work comes
about. In this particular case we have two different gases, separated by a wall and
they are in two different boxes and we can kind of look at what their average speeds
are and what their average energies are and because the speeds and energies are
separated from each other because they are not interacting with each other. They
don't have any effect on each other and they are fairly constant over time but
what we can do is open the box and allow the two different gases to actually mix
and what you see is because this magenta gas has such a smaller mass compared to
the cyan gas, also its average speed and its energy goes way up while the cyans
properties come down in order to meet those becasue we have to get to a mixture
that is in the middle, eventually. We can close this gas off and allow to stabilize
again and each of the chambers will stabilize separately and we can open them
back up and so forth. It allows you to experiment and understand.
So we are using Agent-Based Models in this context to actually simulate the actual
particles moving around in this world and to explore how their energies and how
their velocities effect each other in a way that helps students better understand
things like gas movements and motions.