The Molecular Force Microscope

The Molecular Force Microscope allows the user to explore and manipulate polymer configurations by displacing monomers. The user can thus develop an intuition into the material since also forces are displayed indicating the action that will take place in a subsequent simulation.

For the ellipsoidal model, the visualization uses the n+1 monomers bead-spring mapping, thus allowing a manipulation of individual focal points.

Usage

• click with the right mouse button in the visualization window to pop up a menu that allows the following manipulations
  • Select: select a single monomer for displacement and force calculation
  • Move: move whole image with left mouse button
  • Zoom: zoom in (left mouse button) and out (middle mouse button) of image
  • Rotate: rotate the image (drag with left mouse button and point with middle mouse button)
  • Redraw: redraw the image
• manipulate a selected monomer using the sliders for x-, y-, z-displacement
• select different visualization qualities from fastest (Sticks) to best (Shaded) from the "Visualization" menu.
• produce high glossy (raytracer) output from "Visualization-->High glossy". Choose the size of the high glossy output from "Options-->High glossy window size". Note that producing the high glossy output may take some time.
• select free or periodic boundary conditions from the "Options" menu.