Awards from 1993 Canada Wide Science Fair
Awards from 1993 Canada Wide Science Fair |
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| In 1992, a friend of mine approached me to participate in our high
school Science Fair. The idea was to get an extra percent on one of our
OAC final marks. His idea was spawned by an article in Scientific
America about a program which simulated ants digging tunnels through
articifial intelligence (AI). We began by starting simple, and
prgressed to 14000 lines of C code, and a visual, interactive Computer
Aided Sustainable Ecological Design (CASED) program which modelled
ecological succession, and prey-predator population interdependence.
The ecological succession was controlled by having dead animals or
plants return energy to the ground. Terrain with plants did not loose
energy as quickly as terrain with out. The animals were controlled by 3
sets of genes responsible for their movement depending on the state of
their environment.
My thanks to the people of Riviere Du Loups, who where very welcoming
hosts, and to all the people I met there.
To my co-author, Jonathan, wherever you are, I really don't think I'd be where I am today if it wasn't for your encouragement to enter that science fair -- we never did get all the extra grades we were promised! |
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