This model of Rabbits eating Grass was developed by Mitchel Resnick at the MIT Media Lab . It is an excellent example of a microworld in which young students can freely play, in which slightly older students can begin to experiment and test hypotheses in a "scientific way", and in which middle school children can explore and change the underlying framework of the model.

We begin with a field of 700 red rabbits on a black field of green grass (the old joke immediately comes to mind of the child that hands in a blank sheet of paper, explaining that it is a field of cows eating grass...)

Starlogo provides a nice "control board" for starting and stopping the "demons" (rabbits and grass are all demons!?!), for setting up 700 rabbits in a field of grass, and for changing conditions of the model, as it is "running"/"working"/"living" . Note the initial number of turt... ahh, rabbits.

The following are various stages in the execution of the model:

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

(Return) to Microworlds intro page