Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
We have developed a chemical kinetics simulation that can be used as both an educationaland research tool. The simulator is designed as an accessible, open-source project thatcan be run on a laptop with a student-friendly interface. The application can potentiallybe scaled to run in parallel for large simulations. The simulation has been successfullyused in a classroom setting for teaching basic electrochemical properties. We have shownthat this can be used for simulating fundamental molecular and chemical processes and evensimplified models of predator–prey interactions. By giving the simulated entities spatialextent in the lattice, the particles do not interpenetrate, and clusters of particles canspatially exclude one another. Our simulation demonstrates that spatial inhomogeneityleads to different results than those that are obtained by using standard ordinarydifferential equation models, as previously reported.