Modeling at the Atomic Scale

1. In another unit you learned about the history of the atom and the different models people had of what the atom was like. This kind of model was an idea or "concept model".
2. The term model can also apply to something that acts on rules described by a concept model. This is called a "dynamic model". For example:
   
   A concept model of highway congestion: Traffic congestion is due to people driving fast enough that they catch up to the person in front of them, causing them to slow down more than necessary resulting in congestion.
   
   A dynamic model of highway congestion: A computer could simulate this behavior buy having shapes on the screen move according to the rule of accelerating until meeting another shape. This second type of model is a dynamic model which can be used to see if the congestion does actually result from this type of driving behavior. The person setting up the model can now change various parameters like, how many cars, how fast they drive, how many lanes there are, etc.
   
   

   Click on the image to see a dynamic model of traffic congestion in action:
   
   

   Model created at the MIT Media lab. Copyright 1997 by Uri Wilensky. All rights reserved. See http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/TrafficBasic for terms of use.
   
   

   
   
3. Dynamic modeling is used every day in many different fields. People predict the weather, the stock market, the affect of waves on beaches, the results of high energy physics experiments, the ultimate fate of the universe, the mechanism of how drugs work, etc.
4. We will use dynamic modeling to understand how superballs and ultimately atoms behave so that we can make predictions about matter and properties that are made of atoms that we can't even see.