Chemistry, “Tool Building,” and Brunelleschi’s Dome
It sits atop the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, and is larger than the dome of the US Capitol, St. Paul’s in London, or even St. Peter’s in Rome. It was built before any of them, in 1436. No scaffolding was used, nor does it need external support.
Filippo Brunelleschi has been celebrated as an architectural and engineering genius. There’s even a wonderful book on his design for the Florence Cathedral, which used no scaffolding and required him to invent new tools for the job.
What fascinates me most about Brunelleschi is his singular vision and the drive to work out how to accomplish it. He did not focus on building a new tool — rather he had the design goal in mind (i.e., a vision) and created as he needed to accomplish that.
Personally, I’ve never considered myself a “tool builder.” If there are existing tools that get me there, I tend to use them.
Recently, I commented on problems and opportunities in chemical visualization. What features might we want to see in computer tools for molecular modeling? What do we need to have intuitive vision and easily build our chemistry?
Here are some of my thoughts:
I’d like to see more tools with live, contextually useful information displayed when “action” is occurring. For example, if I stretch a bond, I should see the bond length update automatically. (In short, I want to see the exact numeric feedback for what I’m doing.)
- What if I’m drawing, and it shows me the bond lengths and angles to nearby atoms as I draw?
- What if I’m drawing, and it shows me live updates of chiral atoms and stereochemistry?
- What if I manipulate a fragment and it shows me bonds and angles for “close contacts” or the angle between the new position and the old one?
- What if I render hydrogen bonds and it shows me the hydrogen-bonding distance when a new h-bond is “formed” during molecular dynamics simulations?
- What if we could add measurements that would automatically update during a reaction movie?
- What if we had a “timeline” view for reactions or molecular vibrations or molecular dynamics?
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