Electricity

 

Patterns of Inheritance

Figure 5. Two simulations developed with LOGALä. The shell acts as both a programming environment and an interface that standardizes the response formats across simulations to minimize the required computer skills. Candidates select the values of variables and run, stop, and reset simulations by clicking on Control Panel buttons and enter text in the boxes provided. The right side of the screen displays the process resulting from the examinee's manipulations. In "Electricity," examinees test the contents of three mystery boxes, A, B, and C, by building circuits attached to them; the simulation displays the selected box and circuit and a time-voltage graph. In "Butterflies," examinees investigate patterns of inheritance based on the phenotypes of two generations of a hypothetical species of butterflies; since the total number of individuals and the number of individuals with a specific phenotype varies with each offspring, to solve the problem correctly the examinee needs to run the simulation several times.