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Painted Desert Challenge. Anna Temple-West. What it is. This model is based on the Termites. Set of simple rules that results in them moving all of the wood chips into a single pile. Dimension of multiple types (colors) of wood chips.
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Painted Desert Challenge Anna Temple-West
What it is • This model is based on the Termites. • Set of simple rules that results in them moving all of the wood chips into a single pile. • Dimension of multiple types (colors) of wood chips. • The challenge get the termites to sort each chip type into its own pile
How It Works • Each termite starts wandering randomly. If it bumps into a wood chip, it picks the chip up, and continues to wander randomly. • When it bumps into another wood chip of that color, it finds a nearby empty space and puts its wood chip down. • With these simple rules, the woodchips eventually end up in piles sorted by color.
Observations • As piles of wood chips begin to form, the piles are not "protected" in any way. • That is, termites sometimes take chips away from existing piles. • That strategy might seem counter-productive. • If piles were “protected" that would result in smaller piles, instead of numerous bigger piles.
Sliders • SETUP button to set up the termites (white) and wood chips (all other colors). • GO button to start the simulation. A termite that is carrying a wood chip turns the color of the chip. • The NUMBER slider controls the number of termites. • * Changes in the NUMBER slider do not take effect until the next setup.) • The DENSITY slider controls the initial density of wood chips. • The SIM-DELAY slider can be used to slow down the speed of the simulation. • The PILES slider allows the user sets the number of different chip typesi.e., the number of different piles to be made).
Colors • Red, Orange, Grey, Yellow, Brown, Purple, Magenta, Blue, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Pink, Teal, Dark Green & Lime Green.
Setup 1 Standard Setup • Number 250 • Density 45% • Color 8 • Time was not too long to collect the woodchips because there numerous termites working together
Setup 2 • Number 400 • Density 9% • Color 12 • The piles were smaller because of the density change smaller percent
Setup 3 • Number 75 • Density 99% • Color 3 • Piles are even larger because the density is so high and the amount of termites is much less than the first two tries.
Setup 4 • Number 400 • Density 99% • Color 14 • Piles closer together, it took longer for the piles to form
Setup 5 • Number 4 • Density 4% • Color 2 • Only 1 pile even with 2 colors set. The grey chips were never touched by either of the 2 termites. They kept moving the reds, but never touched the grey ones. Ran it 2 more times after.
Observation to Setup 5 • First time ran for approx. 5 minutes grey was still never moved • Red piled moved all over the place • Set it up again, and got 5 piles. 4 piles of grey and 1 pile of red. After a few minutes it changed to 2 piles of grey and still 1 pile of red. • Ran it once more and got 2 piles of red and 1 pile of grey.
Citation • - Wilensky, U. (1997). NetLogo Painted Desert Challenge model. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PaintedDesertChallenge. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.- Wilensky, U. (1999). NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.