Atom in a Box offers orbital phsyics on iPhone

Dauger Research has introduced Atom in a Box for the iPhone, a 3D real-time volumetric raytracing iPhone application that visually presents quantum orbitals of a hydrogen atom. Using the iPhone's multitouch interface and accelerometer, the user can reorient and interact visually with the atomic orbital. The software is even able to show the "flow" of the electron around the orbital by presenting the time-evolving phase of the wavefunction as color. Atom in a box is available for $10 at the iPhone Apps Store, for both the iPhone and iPod touch. It requires the iPhone 2.0 software update and is also available as a Mac OS X application.

"Atom in a Box was a side project while I was a physics graduate student at UCLA", says Dean Dauger, president of Dauger Research, Inc. "I wanted to 'see' an atom for myself, imagining that I could touch a quantum orbital. Now we can get even closer to holding an atom using a handheld multitouch device like the iPhone. We are grateful for all the wonderful feedback from people about Atom in a Box, so we hope to share our fascination with science renewed in the next computing generation."

Filed under: education, iPhone, software, iPhone apps
Other story tags: 3D