Today, the biomedical students continued to work on the M&M model from yesterday, which gave the students an example of how population growth worked and how to build a model that showed population growth. The model was such that every student had a cup filled with 5 M&Ms which they poured onto the plate. The students then counted how many M&Ms landed with their M facing up. The students then put the M&Ms back into the cup, plus one M&M for every M&M that landed with it's M up. The students stopped when they reached 100 M&Ms.
This introduced the idea of computational modeling since it allowed the students to act out something that they could then create a model of. The students then used an Agent Sheets model that was very similar to their M&M model. The students saw different results from their experiment and from their computer model, which allowed them to learn about troubleshooting.