Marine Biology Simulation Case Study

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The Marine Biology Simulation Case Study (MBCS) is a program written in Java for use with the Advanced Placement Computer Science A and AB examinations. It serves as an example of object-oriented programming (OOP) embedded in a more complicated design project than most students have worked with before. It replaced the Big Integer case study that was in use prior to 2000.

The case study is designed to allow the College Board to quickly test a student's knowledge of object oriented programming ideas such as inheritance and encapsulation as well as requiring students to understand how objects such as "the environment", "the fish", and the simulation's control module interact with each other without having to develop the entire environment independently, which would be quite time consuming. The case study also gives all students taking the AP Computer Science exams with a common experience from which to draw additional test questions.

On each of the exams, at least one free-response question is derived from the case study. There are also five multiple-choice questions that are derived from the case study.

This case study is discontinued from 2007, the last year it was used on AP Computer Science exams. Its replacement is GridWorld.