Children (and adults) often assume centralized behavior even when no such behavior exists. For example, schools of fish are often assumed to have a leader, or an explicit set of rules that define what the school does. However, in actuality  a school arises from simple interactions among fish. In this project, we wish to model these simple interactions that give rise to fish schooling.

    This project will take the form of an instructional and interactive application that will teach children about fish schooling. To ease this learning, the application will have a graphical interface that is simple to use. For older children, we wish to make the model extensible, so that they may explore other fish behaviors that may interest them.

    In addition, we will submit a research paper outlining explanations of emergence and decentralized theories as well as prior work in these systems and in modeling flocks, schools, and herds.