Atomic Interactions

Atomic Interactions is a physics simulation tool written in Java. It thus is supported by Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

It deals with the interactions between atoms. Some of the topics illustrated in this simulation are: atomic interactions, interaction potential, Van der Walls Force and Atomic bonding.

The simulation starts with two Neon atoms, one next to another in a static position. You can drag one of the atoms away from the pinned atom. There is a graph at the top of the screen which shows the potential energy and the distance between the atoms. If you place the atom away from the pinned atom, you will see that it slowly starts moving towards the pinned atom. The farther away they are from each other, the smaller the attraction is. When they are too close, they will repel each other, and the pull might make the free atom come back to the pinned atom or not.

You can change the atoms that are used in the simulation to a combination of Argon-Argon, Oxygen-Oxygen, Neon-Argon, etc. You can also unhide the force arrows, which show the direction of the force (repulsive or attractive).