Uploaded February 2010 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The video shows a rotating spiral wave in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The bright squares are elastomer obstacles made by softlithography from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The obstacles define a grid-like race track for the chemical wave. The moving (bright) segments are blue and oxidized in the experiment, while the darker regions are red and chemically reduced. This optical contrast is caused by the redox catalyst/indicator ferroin. In this particular example, the spiral wave rotates around 2x2 PDMS obstacles. Notice that the pinned spiral periodically fails to move through the interior channel segments of this pinning obstacle cluster. These dynamics motivated us to create our "chiral walker" model (see other movies in this playlist).
The video shows a rotating spiral wave in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The bright squares are elastomer obstacles made by softlithography from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The obstacles define a grid-like race track for the chemical wave. The moving (bright) segments are blue and oxidized in the experiment, while the darker regions are red and chemically reduced. This optical contrast is caused by the redox catalyst/indicator ferroin. In this particular example, the spiral wave rotates around 2x2 PDMS obstacles. Notice that the pinned spiral periodically fails to move through the interior channel segments of this pinning obstacle cluster. These dynamics motivated us to create our "chiral walker" model (see other movies in this playlist).
