To start today's Shodor Scholars Program, instructor Dr. Bob Panoff gave a short talk on how science and math apply to real life. After he had finished, the students gave their answers to a logistics problem that they had received the day before. Having received and explained the answers, Dr. Panoff led the students in a lesson to learn relatively simple math and complex science come together to solve problems. An application he used to illustrate his point was a program that simulated how electrons behaved in a small, closed, positively charged space. The program used algorithms to control the actions of the electrons. Then, Dr. Panoff used the Excel program to explain the concept of iteration to the students. They made a model that displayed diffusion in Excel, and then learned how diffusion relates to iteration. The model the students built illustrated how heat diffuses from a heat source into a room of a different temperature. While the students continued working on their Excel models, Dr. Panoff explained the basics of computer science: iteration and "if." The "if" stands for statements in programming that tell the computer what to do; the "if", "else", and "else-if" statements.
After the students had lunch, Dr. Panoff explained the concept of modeling in the break room. Using ropes, he had the students model as many things as they could think of. The students learned that, barring a few cases, these simple ropes could model a nearly every problem that they had come up with. Dr. Panoff then proceeded to inform the students of the most powerful universal statement; "Have = Had + Change." He then explained the various models that this statement could be implemented in. Once the students were back in the classroom, Dr. Panoff translated the Have = Had + Change model into an equation that modeled the birth rate of a rabbit population. He explained that the equation was just re-stating the model, but in mathematical terms. After having explained this, he had the students open a Shodor webpage. From there, the students opened a link to a model in Excel that was based on the equation Dr. Panoff had written earlier. Excel performed the many iterations needed to graph the model, freeing the students up to be able to change the model as they liked and truly see how computer modeling can assist researchers and scientists in modeling real world problems. When the students had finished modifying the model in Excel, Dr. Panoff drew a "picture" of the rabbit equation. The "picture" was, in reality, a flow chart that displayed the activities of the rabbits. After Dr. Panoff had drawn the picture, he instructed the students to open another program called Vensim. This is a flowchart generator that the students were able to use to make flowcharts that would model situations like the rabbit population from the previous model. The students duplicated the picture that Dr. Panoff had drawn into the program in order to get a taste of what Vensim could do before the workshop concluded for the afternoon.