Welcome to the Turtle World of Logo

 

Type CS and press Enter ¿ to show your turtle.

Its HOME is in the middle of the screen.

                                                                Where is its head?

                                                                Where is its tail?

 

 

Your turtle is lazy. It will not move without a C.A.R.

 

                Command              What to do!                   

                Argument               How much to do!           

                Return (Enter ¿)    Do it!

 

Here are four movement commands your turtle understands

                                                  FD (FORWARD)                  RT (RIGHT)

                                                  BK (BACK)                           LT (LEFT)

Try a C.A.R. with each one in turn to see what they do.

 

E.g.                        FD space 100 Return (Enter ¿)

 

Use CS (Clear Screen) between each C.A.R. to return HOME with a clear screen.

 

Now write a sequence of C.A.R.s to draw a regular square and a regular triangle.

Regular means: identical 'sides' and identical 'corners'

 

 

 

 

Keep trying until you succeed. Can you see a pattern in your results?

REPEAT is a new command to help you make regular polygons easier and quicker to draw. Here is how to use it:

REPEATspacen [Com1spaceArg1spaceCom2spaceArg2spaceetc. ...]

The REPEAT command must have square brackets. The brackets contain as

many 'command argument' pairs as it is necessary to repeat.

 

Try the new command on the triangle and the square.

Write those results in the table below and continue for the other 'regular' polygons.

Note:    You may accidentally discover the 'angle of turn' for another polygon.         Be sure to write it in before you forget it.

 

 

Polygon

 

Name

 

Sides

 

Angle

 

Instructions to the Turtle

 

 

Triangle

 

  3

 

 

REPEAT   3  [ FD                     RT                   ]

 

 

Square

 

 

 

REPEAT

 

Here are two new commands to help you see whether your shape joins up exactly:

                        HT - Hide Turtle

                        ST - Show Turtle

                        ... and, remember, CS - Clear Screen - will allow you to start anew.

Ask your Mentor for another command for a more exact method.

 

 

Pentagon

 

 

 

 

Ask your Mentor how to 'copy and edit' previous tests in the Commander Window.

 

 

Hexagon

 

 

 

 

Octagon

 

 

 

 

Nonagon

 

 

 

 

Decagon

 

 

 

 

Now try a circle. Take note of the 'sides-angle' pattern above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How fast can you make your circle draw?

Look at your completed chart on the previous page.

 

§         Can you see a pattern in the Sides and the Angle columns?                                             

§         For each polygon, is there a relationship between the two numbers?

§         Can you write a theory that says how many degrees need to be turned to complete the polygon so that your turtle returns to its original heading?

 

 

Total-trip Theorem: my hypothesis is....

 

 

The PROCEDURE Mode: Teaching your turtle new tricks

 

 

Up to now you have worked in the 'direct command' mode.

Now you will learn how to teach your turtle PROCEDURES that it can remember.

 

 

This is how to teach your turtle to draw a SQUARE (or SQU).

 

You will need two new commands: TO <new proc> to start the teaching mode, and END to end the teaching mode.

 

1.     type TO SQUARE and press Enter ¿

 

2.     type your SQUARE commands e.g. REPEAT 4 [ FD 50 RT 90 ]

          and press Enter ¿

 

3.      now type END to finish your teaching.        The 'Commander' window will show 'SQUARE defined'.

 

 

4.    finally type SQUARE and press Enter ¿  to get the turtle to draw your square.

 

Good Style

 

Concentrate on developing 'good style' when naming your procedures.

 

Instead of SQUARE you could have called the square procedure S, SQ, or SQU, or

BOX, or perhaps ROBERT. It is best to keep your PROC names short but still meaningful. S would really be too short and could stand for SUN or SHADOW whilst ROBERT would not be a meaningful name for square.

Creating a new procedure with EDIT

 

You have already taught a SQUARE procedure using TO SQUARE.

 

Now you will teach a TRIANGLE procedure using ED "TRIANGLE.

 

·        Type ED "TRIANGLE in the Commander Window 'Input Box' and press Enter ¿

 

·        Click the cursor after TRIANGLE in the Edit Window and press Enter ¿ to create an empty line with the cursor at its beginning.

 

·      Now type your TRIANGLE commands REPEAT 3 [ FD 50 RT 120 ] in the empty line.

 

You are now ready to save your new procedure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saving the Edit Window.

 

 

·        Select File>Save and Edit and click your mouse.

 

·        Type TRIANGLE in the Commander Window 'Input Box' and press Enter ¿ to test your new procedure.

 

 

 

Turn to the next page to learn how to clone procedures.
Cloning a new procedure with EDIT.

 

 

·        Type ED "TRIANGLE in the Commander Window 'Input Box' and press Enter ¿

 

·        Highlight ALL of the procedure to cover both TO and END

 

·        Copy the highlighted area by Edit>Copy or by holding [Ctrl] and pressing [C] (^C)

 

 

You are now ready to clone your procedure.

 

 

 

·        Click after END and press Enter ¿ twice to create a gap between the existing procedure and the copy to be pasted.

 

·        Paste the copy by Edit>Paste or by holding [Ctrl] and pressing [V] (^V)

 

 

 

You are now ready to edit your cloned procedure.

 

 

·        Highlight the pasted procedure name i.e. TRIANGLE and type the clone procedure name i.e. PENTAGON

 

·        then highlight the 'number of turns' after REPEAT and type 5 to delete the 3

 

·        and then highlight the 'angle of turn' after RT and type 72 to delete the 120

 

·        now save your cloned procedure with File>Save and Exit.

 

 

Be sure to test your new procedure in the Commander Window.

 

·           now repeat the above process for all your shapes.

Saving files of procedures

 

Now you have taught the turtle many things, you need a quick way to re-teach those things next time you switch the computer on. Here is how to save a file of procedures:

·         First select <B>File>Save</B> on the MSWLogo Screen Menu Bar and select the Disk or Directory where your files are to be saved.

·         Then type SAVE "MyFile3.LGO in the Commander Window 'Input Box' (or MyFile4, MyFile5, etc.- whatever is next in the sequence) and press Enter ¿. Good style requires that you use a file name that describes the procedures it contains.

You need to be very careful with your choice of filename because if it is the same name as an existing file it will over-write it and the original file will be lost forever.

 

A safer method is to select File>Save As which will:

 

·         open the file window to show the existing file names,

 

·         allow you to type a new name, and

 

·         if you choose an existing file name it will warn you.

 

 

Saving a file of selected procedures

 

It is good practice to save only the procedures that match the descriptive file name you have used.

To save a selected list of procedures you can use the 'savelist' command, e.g.

SAVEL [FLOWERS GRASS BUSH TREES ... etc.] "GARDEN

This would leave out any files not needed. Instead you could erase all the procedures not needed but you may prefer not to do that.

 

Loading files of procedures

 

Here is how to load a file of procedures:

·         Select File>Load on the MSWLogo Screen Menu Bar and select the Disk or Directory from which your file is to be loaded.

·         Type LOAD "MyFile.LGO in the Commander Window 'Input Box' and Enter ¿.

 

Several files may be loaded at the beginning but be very careful as procedures in later files will over-write any earlier procedures that have the same name.

 

After you have edited, or added procedures to, the workspace you will get this warning.

 

Think carefully about which choice you will make.

Changing the size of your polygons

 

Use the Editor to change the size of your triangle: ED "TRIANGLE to create a triangle size 267 i.e. FD 267. Try another size.

 

To create two different-sized triangles at the same time you should now clone TRIANGLE to produce TRI-50 and TRI-267. To have ten different sizes simultaneously you would need ten clones. This would be a rather cumbersome method.

 

Logo has a better way. You can give TRIANGLE an 'argument': a variable input size, e.g. TRIANGLE 100, TRIANGLE 250, etc. just like FD 100.

 

ED "TRIANGLE and change the procedure so that it reads:

 

 

 

 

              TO TRIANGLE  :SIZE

                     REPEAT 3 [ FD  :SIZE  RT  120 ]

              END

 

 

 

 

Now save the Editor and test your edited TRIANGLE. If you get the message

"not enough inputs to TRIANGLE" you have forgotten to attach the input size,

e.g. TRIANGLE 123.

 

Now type TRIANGLE 50 TRIANGLE 100 TRIANGLE 150 TRIANGLE 200 ... etc. in the Commander Window 'Input Box' as a single line input.

 

Now include an input variable on all your shapes as follows:

·        EDALL

·        Highlight the space:SIZE after TO TRIANGLE and copy by doing [Ctrl] [C] i.e. ^C

·        Click after each TO shape in turn and paste space:SIZE by doing [Ctrl] [V] i.e. ^V

·        Delete the value after each FD instruction and paste it again by doing ^V

·        Save the Editor Window and test each shape procedure.

 

Experiment with your variable shapes. Try this pattern:

 

 

      TO PATTERN

            REPEAT 3 [ TRIANGLE 100  RT 120 ]

      END

 

 

See what other interesting patterns you can create using TRIANGLE, SQUARE, HEX, OCT etc. with different REPEAT values and 'angle of turn' values.

Working with more than one variable

 

Before we start putting shapes together we should teach our turtle two very useful procedures: the rectangle and the arc.

 

Teach your turtle to draw a rectangle with sides of 300 and 100.

Can you use REPEAT?

How many times does the pattern repeat?

 

 

   TO RECTANGLE

 

   END

 

Now your rectangle works, how are you going to control the shape to produce different rectangles of different size and proportions?