Fountain Programming Activity

The fountain programming activity is for suitable for beginnger programmers who want more challenge than following a step-by-step tutorial but aren't ready for open-ended programming exercises. In this activity, students build a model of a water fountain. There is a spout agent that hatches water agents that fly up and falls as water droplets. It is helpful but not required to have some basic understanding of the physics of motion - specifically how position, velocity and acceleration are related. By controlling the variable sliders, students can gain an intuition about the effect of gravity on the motion of a falling object. This project can also help students understand simultaneous independent motion because the motion of the droplets approximate simple projectile motion, which contains horizontal and vertical components.