Activity Description Run a simulation of how a fire will spread through a stand of trees, learning about probability and chaos. Parameters: Probability that a tree catches fire if its neighbor is on fire. Probabilities are input as fractions or decimals.

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Fire!!

Place in mathematics curriculum:

• demonstrate randomness
• motivate the ideas of chaos
• demonstrate the basic concepts of probability

This activity allows the user to see the results of a fire if a forest is densely planted in a rectangular grid. This activity would work well in mixed ability groups of two for about thirty to thirty-five minutes if you use the exploration questions and ten to fifteen minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• give implicit directions on what they are to do. For example, "Today we are going to run a set of experiments and answer the questions on the worksheet..."
• answer the question "Why does it burn one or two trees but say that 0% was burned?"