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Modeling Your World B 2000
Shodor > SUCCEED > Workshops > Archive > Modeling Your World B 2000

The students began the day being taught by Christina about biomedical sciences. She explained exactly what they were going to cover today--some topics included the flu model and a diabetes model. After Christina finished, the class went outside to talk to Bob2 about their observation skills and to observe a few rope tricks. They then came inside after a brief discussion. Christina then explained to the students that there are different types of diabetes. Next she gave them a few guidelines to follow when they run the model. The students read the scenario and then they adjusted the model to reach an ideal dosage amount. The case study involved a pregnant woman, which made it more complex. Their goal was to get their model as close to Christina's as they could.

After break, Renee gave the students a brief lesson in STELLA, she taught them the tools that they would need for all of their models. She also informed them exactly what STELLA will do with the information that they give. Today the class started with the students going outside. Once outside Christina taught the students how to play a game called lynx and hares. In this game the students pretended that they were lynx and hares. The object of the game was to show how much the population of the hares was dependent on the population of lynx. The students then came inside to use the STELLA model to model the same thing that the game modeled virtually. The students then entered a brief discussion of observations that they made during the hare and lynx activities. Students took the opportunity to change their models any way they liked in order to view the results and how they changed with different variables.

After break the students came back to the lab and Christina gave them a website to go to show them the birth rate and death rate of the United States. With this information the students worked with their partners to create a model of the birth and death rates of humans in the U.S. The students then went back to the Internet to find the death rate and the birth rate of another country and modeled that on the same page as the United States model. The students then compared the two and had a discussion of why the two countries varied so much. Next Cornelia came in and showed the students a model called rabbits and wolves that can be found at http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/rabbits/index.html. This showed the students how a break in the food chain can wipe out many different organisms.