In March 2020 the Spanish authorities ordered a nation-wide home confinement in an effort to avoid the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. This paper takes the current COVID-19 pandemic as motivation for a simple growth model designed for explaining virus propagation to children and was initially prepared in Scracth 3 for the son of the first author. The mathematical model used is that of fractal growth trees, which are graphically rendered in order to provide a strong visual message of the nature of exponential growth. The rendering is done in Maple’s Turtle Graphics package. This work is situated within a history of Turtle Geometry, starting with its beginnings in the classic Logo programming language, and describing how it fits within the current landscape of powerful software tools. The implementation within Maple is described, with relevant vignettes of code included. The complete Maple version of the tale is available from MaplePrimes. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
A Simplified Introduction to Virus Propagation Using Maple’s Turtle Graphics Package Suitable for Children