Using motion-detectors to record their speeds (Calculator-Based Rangers^TM attached to graphing calculators) students move around "like gas molecules" in an enclosed space for fifteen seconds.  The histograms from the individual students and/or the entire class' aggregated data can be displayed.  The class can discuss what these graphs say them about the distribution of speeds of the "people molecules".  The data from the class can be replayed in NetLogo and projected (third image in top row below).  The goal of this exercise is to have students use their insights from the people molecules participatory simulation to help them make better sense of the Maxwell-Boltzman distribution of speeds for an ideal gas (a concept covered in nearly all physical science/chemistry classes).  NetLogo, running as a stand alone modeling environment, can simulate an ideal gas and the distribution of speeds can be displayed (second row of images below).  Of course the behavior of people molecules is not "the same" as that of an ideal gas.  But the claim is that the constrasts (and similarities too) between the students' embodied experience in the participatory simulation and the behavior of an ideal gas provide "cognitive texture" that is useful in sense-making.  The behavior of the two "gases" does not have to be identical to advance the understandings of various emergent distributions of speeds.

 

Participatory Simulation   
Stand-Alone Gas Model    

 
All files can be downloaded here.

launch NetLogo activity (PC users only)

download People Molecules models self-extracting archive

launch a model of an ideal gas in a box.
 

Click to view an in-depth unit created for this activity.