The Hens & Rabbits applet describes a well-known word problem in two different representations.[br][br]A farmer has 50 animals. Some are hens & some are rabbits. Among them they have a total of 140 legs. How many hens and how many rabbits does the farmer have? [br][br]One representation of the problem shows the {animals, feet} plane and the other representation shows the {hens, rabbits} plane. [[size=85]the '[i]answer' to the question posed in the problem is 30 hens and 20 rabbits - the point {30 hens, 20 rabbits} is plotted in the right panel - the point {50 animals, 140 feet} is plotted in the left panel.[/i][/size]][br][br]You can choose to set the number of rabbits and hens in the right panel by dragging the GREEN and BLUE DOTS, [i][b][size=200]or[/size][/b][/i][br][br]- you can choose to set the number of feet and animals in the left plane by dragging the GREEN and BLUE DOTS. [br][br]Study the two representations carefully -[br][br]How are the numbers of rabbits and the number of hens represented in the {animals, feet} plane?[br][br]How are the number of animals and the number of feet represented in the {hens, rabbits} plane?[br][br]How are the quantities feet/rabbit and feet/hen represented in each of the two planes?[br][br]Which representation do you think provides you with more insight? Why?[br][br][color=#ff0000][i][b]How can you use this applet to generate more problems of this sort?[br][br]What questions could/would you ask your students? [br][br]What have you learned about word problems from this applet?[/b][/i][/color]