Evolve a car! Watch it happen! I watch this for hours while I'm working on my computer. The best performing cars get to reproduce themselves in the next generation, and the cars gain functionality - or not! Sometimes the best cars will "die" anyway, and that chance is also part of evolution. Sometimes I let the program run overnight and look at it in the morning to see what has evolved over many generations. Truly fascinating to see what this program comes up with! You can set the mutation rate of the cars higher or lower, play around with the number of wheels, and give the cars different challenging terrains to adapt to. Expect a "train wreck" of failures for the first 10 to 20 generations, but you will ultimately see the best working cars survive, survivors reproduce over time, and you will see the population makeup of the cars change to fit the terrain. Different terrain environments will select for different optimally shaped cars - just like natural selection does over time with living organisms!
Watch it happen!!
This website is devoted to the life and writings of the late Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard biology professor and one of the great science writers for the general public in the 20th Century. Gould was, in my opinion, the greatest writer on evolutionary topics that has ever lived. Focus on the SJG Library link, and on his quotations. Read Gould and get the measure of how a scientist's mind works. I don't agree with everything he says, but I've never read anything by him that I haven't liked and respected.
This is part of a website devoted to the evolution of the primates, this page focusing specifically on humans. Some basic evidence for human evolution is given in a series of links to written and video resources, and if you go to the main menu, primate evolution in general is covered. The site offers additional information - I specifically recommend you reading the page concerning Primate Color Vision. It is fascinating!
Thanks again to Mrs. Richards and her summer 2011 super science students for letting me know about this website.
Here is a website with a wide variety of readings concerning evolution and the history of life on Earth. It is a presentation of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, a nonprofit scientific association dedicated to biological research and education. It was founded by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and is a premier source of biology information. You should consider these readings as extremely worthwhile in order to give you some depth and background in the topics we touch on in class. Also, I emphatically recommend that you spend some time looking the AIBS website over, especially if you have plans for a career in biology. You can link to it through the AIBS logo at the top of this Readings page.
My sincere gratitude to Mrs. Gwendolyn Richards, an Idaho educator, and her summer 2011 high school science students, for making me aware of this superb website. Bravo and well done, Eagles!!
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