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Alien Microbe

In this project, students will use the Python graphics library to draw an image of microbial culture. They will then calculate the growth of their microbes by implementing functions that calculate linear growth, exponential growth, and exponential decay.

Medium

4 Hours

High School

Project Description


<p>Imagine you’re a scientist at CodeHS Labs who has just discovered an alien microbe! In this project, you'll be writing a program that draws the microbe you discovered and explores a variety of growth rates. </p> <br> ##Your Task Before you run any experiments on your new discovery, you want to create a graphic image of the alien microbe. The only requirements are that you define a function named <strong>alien_microbe </strong>to write all of the graphics code in the function body and avoid using web images. You should also print the name of your microbe in the console so that we know what it is called. Other than that, feel free to use any graphics you'd like and get creative! <br> After drawing your microbe, you are going to set up some experiments to see under what conditions your new alien microbe population can grow the fastest. You now set up the alien microbes in <strong>three different cultures</strong> to determine the most efficient conditions for them to grow in. You realize that the <strong>growth rate</strong> of the microbes is different in all of the cultures. In fact, in one of the cultures you're actually seeing the number of microbes decrease!</p> <br> Here are the different types of growth you are seeing: <p><br></p><ul><li><strong>Culture 1: Linear Growth - </strong>The number of microbes is increasing by the same amount after a given amount of time. <li><strong>Culture 2: Exponential Growth - </strong>The number of microbes is <strong>increasing</strong> in proportion to themselves.</li> <li><strong>Culture 3: Exponential Decay - </strong>The number of microbes is <strong>decreasing</strong> in proportion to themselves.</li> <br> Your program will use specific functions to calculate and display the three different growth rates. What discoveries will you make about this new microbe?!">

Project Demo

Explore this program before assigning it!

Project Overview

Here is an outline of the project activities:
Create An Alien Microbe
Calculate the Growth