Fraction A Day - Day 12 - Esteban's Fraction Cutter Design

So I asked the question, how would you create a program to "cut" the polygon in half so you have two polygons and can separate them (similar to Slice It!).

One person asked can we use the slope (she had been studying slope).  I responded its natural to use what you just learned and what you know and its wonderful when it works.  Can anyone think of another way?

Then Esteban suggested:

"You fill the square with little turtles until it all fills up. Then you count how many are on each side to get the percent."   

(this was for the part of the game where it reports the fractional parts as percentages.)

I asked then said that's an interesting idea, how could you tell which side of the line a turtle is on? To which he responded:

"So lets say ou have a tool that measures color and a tool that measures distance. then you merge those tools and make a script that sees two colos and measures the distance between them and from that you can say, what if I do it to measure the whol box and have that tool tell you the area of something.

I then asked: How would you program that?

"Take two basic tools and build a script that uses both of them then build a script that uses two other basic tools, then combine them and keep going so you have like a ladder to the ultimate goal."

 Now, I ask myself, what basic tools could I provide that kids could use to build a "slicer" script.  Dr. Geo and Geogebra come to mind (thanks Karl for the idea).  I like the idea of Dr. Geo (not only because a version is embedded in Etoys, but it allows you to script).

FYI, I already have figured out a way to do this (I think) just have not had the time to program it.