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Description
Following a guided-inquiry approach, students hypothesize how the relationships between contact rates and host density might depend on the types of contacts that lead to transmission, or the "mode" of pathogen transmission. After making hypotheses and quantitative predictions, students use tiny robots to manipulate host density and measure the effects on contact rates. The activity is designed for a 90-minute lab period, and there is an optional homework activity that involves running a simulation with Excel to explore how contact rates affect whether an epidemic will occur or not.
Notes
This adaptation does not include the Netlogo simulation or the real snail contact rate dataset. Instead, it focuses only on the HEXBUG robot experiment, and expands that activity for a 90 minute lab period.
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
- Hopkins, S. (2020). Diseasebots HEXBUG Lab. QUBES Educational Resources. doi:10.25334/9JR0-DV86