The short videos presented in this page are not a replacement of the seminar. They merely explain once more a few of the main points made in the Force Field seminar and practical.

Figure 42. Force fields are everywhere. We will discuss some FF that are commonly used in chemistry/bioinformatics, but be aware that FF are used in trafic regulation, rocket science, flood protection, nuclear bombs, car design, etc.

Figure 43. Chemists know that quantum chemistry (QC) is the only correct way to calculate things about molecules. Unfortunately, QC takes so much CPU time that anything larger than hydrogen becomes impossible to calculate. So for bigger things, like drugs or proteins, we need shortcuts such as FF methods.

Figure 44. Molecular dynamics is probably the technique in computational chemistry that has been responsible for more CPU time used, world-wide, than all other computational methods together. And still, it is a relatively simple method based on a FF that commonly includes five terms...

Figure 45. Feynman invented something called finite elements. This technique is also known by the name of self-consistent field. It is, for example, used in in silico wind-tunnel experiments, in nuclear bomb design, and in electrostatic calculations on proteins.

Figure 46. In bioinformatics we can do alchemy. The simple command s'/Pb/' '/Au/' is enough to convert lead into gold. And the Boltzman equation can be used for almost everything (and we don't often care about the minus sign either).

Figure 47. This last example shows how a FF for secondary structure prediction helps when sequence alignments get difficult.