AtomTouch is a molecular simulation app, created through a partnership between UW MRSEC and Field Day Lab, that allows learners to explore principles of thermodynamics and molecular dynamics in an tactile, exploratory way.

Simulation Features
Lennard Jones and Buckingham Simulation Engine
Create molecules from Cu, Au and Pt
Change thermodynamics properties
Control time
Experiment with the potential energy, finding stable geometries
Watch the process of melting and vaporizing

The Need
Stick and ball models of chemistry leave much to be desired. They easily reinforce misconceptions and they don’t provide learners with a sense of the dynamic movement and forces that are operating at the molecular scale.

Project Description
Working with molecular dynamics simulation expert Dane Morgan, UW MRSEC education director Ann Lynn Gillian-Daniel and with the support of a MRSEC seed grant, Field Day developed interactive 3-D simulation for mobile devices. The simulation was developed to help students understand the structures and attributes of particles at the molecular level, providing real-time feedback and responding to student’s actions.

The Team
Anne Lynn Gillian-Daniel (Education Lead)
Dane Morgan (Simulation Lead)
David Gagnon (Production Lead)
Tyler Anlauf (Art / UI / UX Design Lead)
Yucheng Tu (Unity Software Engineer Lead)
Justin Moeller (Software Engineer)
Ben Taylor (User Testing, Educational Design)
Izabela Szlufarska (MRSEC Inderdisciplinary Computational Group Lead)
Tam Mayesiba (Simulation Software Engineer)
Henry Wu (Simulation Software Engineer)
Amirhossein Davoody (Simulation Software Engineer)

The Code
AtomTouch is open source and available for you to customize. Get the code at https://github.com/fielddaylab/atomtouch