Project GUTS afterschool
Trailblazers
Printable copy of the student handout for use with the Trailblazers activity. If possible, print in color.
Toss-Up
This activity uses dics and various rounds of play to simulate the spread of a disease and allows students to examine the effect of three variables: transmission rate (determined by dice roll); duration (determined by number of rounds of play) and virulence (determined by infecting 4 or 8 neighbors). This activity fits well with the epidemiology model to discuss these variables before beginning to model a specific disease.
Prisoner's Dilemma (Tit for Tat)
This game is based on the problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma in which you have the choice of cooperating with a partner or defecting against them. The background problem of the prisoner’s dilemma typically described as the following: (from Poundstone, W. (1992) Prisoner's Dilemma)
Battle of the Agents
Battle of the Agents:
Object of the game: To learn X & Y coordinates in Spaceland.
Preparing:
You and your opponent sit facing each other, hiding each other’s paper with: folders, binders, fold paper in half etc.
Secretly with a pen or pencil place 4 agents, one in each quadrant on the grid labeled mine. Your opponent does the same. Don’t place any agents on the x or y axis.
You can’t change the position of any of the agents once the game has begun.
How to play:
Peanut Butter & Jelly Robot
Materials:
Jar of peanut (or soy) butter, jar of jelly, several butter knives, loaf of sliced bread, tablecloth or drop cloth, cleaning supplies, writing materials
Instructions for Peanut Butter & Jelly Robot
Penny Growth
Did you ever count bacterial colonies growing in a petri dish? Or track the accumulation of money in your savings account? Or watch as mold spread over an old piece of bread? If so, you have observed population growth in action. As populations grow, the change in the number of individuals in those populations over time can be classified in different ways. Exponential growth and logistic growth are terms applied to specific patterns of population expansion. Both exponential and logistic growth are central to many processes and are the basis for many models.
27 Blind Mice
Musicians in an orchestra take cues from the conductor as the tempo changes; students pass notes to each other during history class; football players simultaneously initiate the play as the quarterback calls “hike.” In any multi-agent system, members of the system communicate with one another. Even in systems comprised of nonhuman entities, objects exchange information. For instance, billiard balls “communicate” information about their velocity and direction as they collide.