Major hat-tip to Michael Vassar for the pointer to this excellent, inspiring, fascinating animation of molecular processes in a cell.
The animation shows a number of molecular machines--ribosomes, motors, and more--working to move molecules and structures around a cell, and even to create the structures. It also shows a lot of membrane events, and molecules working with and through membranes, and a few organelles. It shows the molecules in their real molecular structure--these are renderings of experimental data, not artists' conceptions.
Not being a poet, I can't describe how fascinating and beautiful the animation is. You have to see for yourself. I will say that I was literally ooh-ing and ah-ing while I watched it.
There is one major departure from reality: The molecules go directly to their destination, rather than bumping around randomly until they happen to fall into place. Likewise, the vast majority of molecules floating around waiting to find a place are not shown. This makes the molecular events look more deterministic and machine-like than they really are. But if they showed every molecule and all the Brownian action, it would be like trying to see through a blizzard, and there would be no way to match the molecular and cellular time scales.
An assignment, "Describe this video in as much detail as possible," would make a challenging final exam question for even a college-level cellular biology or molecular biology class. I could write ten pages easily, and I only recognized about half of what was going on.
As computers speed up and software improves, it will rapidly become easier to make this kind of video. The pedagogical implications are huge. A few geniuses may have been able to "see" the molecular level this way in their imagination. Now, students will be able to see it.
There's a saying that "The medium is the message." The message of this medium is: The nanoscale is accessible.
Chris Phoenix
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology weblog blog
I saw this video after being posted on Brian's blog a little over a month ago. I agree with you that it is poetry in motion. The music is great too.
Posted by: Jonathan Pugh | October 01, 2006 at 11:55 PM
"The message of this medium is: The nanoscale is accessible."
Why would you say so? This is just an animation and not a simulation, like the nanofactory movie is.
This clip is prettier than the nanofac clip, but that message goes better with it.
Posted by: Jan-Willem Bats | October 02, 2006 at 05:49 AM
For anybody interested in some serious physics simulations:
Havok 4.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjSJ0PHqf8&eurl=
Alan Wake on Intel Quad Code: http://www.gamescheatcodes.co.uk/Movies/intelquadcore.htm
Posted by: Jan-Willem Bats | October 02, 2006 at 05:57 AM
Accessible not in the sense of manipulable, but in the sense of comprehensible. It's not some weird realm like quantum physics that no one can really understand.
Granted, if they showed the Brownian motion, it would look a bit less accessible. And granted, there are some nanotechnologies that accentuate the quantum.
In the nanofactory movie, the chemistry is simulated, but almost everything you see is animated based on simple solid geometry. In the cell movie, if I understand it right, every time you see a shape in atomic detail, you are seeing a rendering of atoms in experimentally determined or at least simulated positions.
Posted by: Chris Phoenix, CRN | October 02, 2006 at 06:19 AM