As an undergraduate chemistry student, I was captivated by the opening lines of Fritjof Capra's influential book The Tao of Physics. Capra describes an epiphany on a beach, when he suddenly "saw" the cosmic dance of the atoms and molecules all around him.
Capra had to use his mind's eye, but it is now possible for anyone to see molecules in motion thanks to David Glowacki, a theoretical chemist at the University of Bristol, UK .
Glowacki's day job involves computational modelling of atoms and molecules; he is one of the developers of a widely used software package called CHARMM (Chemistry at Harvard Macromolecular Mechanics) that simulates systems containing many particles.
He has now turned his hand to an artistic project in the hope of breaking new scientific ground. Danceroom Spectroscopy uses models of molecules in the air around us ? largely nitrogen and oxygen ? and projects them into a room where they appear as shimmering, dancing lights on the walls.
Good vibrations
The fun really starts when the people come in. The system includes motion sensors which add bodily movements to the simulation. People are represented as "force fields" ? a technical term in molecular modelling that refers to a molecule's potential energy ? that the team can alter to repel or attract virtual particles.
The effect is visually stunning, especially when combined with dance, as Glowacki has done in a series of performances called Hidden Fields .
The dancers' movements also affect the music. Glowacki's team can calculate the dancers' vibrational spectra by measuring the speed at which they move and putting the numbers through a mathematical operation called a Fourier transform. This information is then used to make the music respond to the dancers' movements.
Seeing sound
Glowacki is now making Danceroom Spectroscopy react to yet another kind of input ? sound waves. Tonight at the Bristol Proms, violinist Nicola Benedetti's instrument will be rigged up so the sound from each string can be monitored and the sounds converted into visuals.
At the moment, the project is more art than science. Even so, the methods developed for Danceroom Spectroscopy are pushing scientific and computational frontiers.
It takes a whopping amount of computer power to run such a vast number of molecular calculations simultaneously. A few years ago, it took 6 parallel processors to run my research calculations on 100 water molecules. Danceroom Spectroscopy requires 5000 processors, says Glowacki.
Then there is the impact on molecular modelling, which is used to research drug design, nanochemistry and protein folding. The code behind the project is research-grade, says Glowacki. He hopes to use it to make game-like simulations in which chemists and aspiring citizen scientists can walk around moving atoms and manipulating proteins, for example. This could accelerate the speed at which new proteins can be discovered.
Danceroom Spectroscopy is touring the US and Europe over the next two years, with events being announced online.
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