Molecular Motors

Chemistry can be a difficult subject, as there is usually no way to visualize what is happening at such a small scale. No matter how interesting certain concepts may sound, most students have no way of observing actions without specialized equipment.

Thankfully, computer simulations can you visualize things that would normally be invisible. If you don’t have a very powerful microscope at hand, you can just see a computer representation of how molecules and atoms would interact in certain situations.

Molecular Motors is a Java-based program that illustrates the actions of molecular motors at a microscopic level. It allows you to control a wide range of parameters and analyze how fast they can pull through a single strand of DNA under various circumstances.

You can, for instance, select one of the two available molecular motors, specify which types of forces should be displayed and move the laser to different positions. The simulation speed is also customizable.

The application can also display a position histogram in a separate window, which shows the location of the bead relative to the laser. What’s more, the potential energy curve can be displayed in a graph at the top of the main window.