Corrosion Cell

Instructions:
pretty much everything is clickable/draggable, and you can hover over a graphic to get more information...see how different things affect the corrosion rate!

Goal:
make the corrosion rate as fast as possible!

Background:
so one project i'm developing at work is a department of defense funded flash game that's supposed to teach people about metal corrosion (rust) and ways to stop it on bridges and buildings and stuff...what you see above is called a corrosion cell, and is an abstracted kind of model for pretty much how all metals corrode...a metal corrodes when it is put into contact with another piece of dissimilar metal and an electrolyte (saltwater, etc.)...the dissimilarity can arise from two metals being different elements, microscopic differences/impurities within the composition of just one piece of metal, or two pieces of identical metal being exposed to different ambient conditions...this interactive application demonstrates how these factors and conditions affect the rate of corrosion

the blue particles are electrons, the others are salt and metal ions

if u actually want to know more, i wrote an essay on my personal site [link] then go to writings->what is corrosion

Yea I know...
this thing is insanely complex without any kind of contextual knowledge...i'm just hoping the particle effects amuse u...this thing is used throughout the game i'm making with various levels of interactivity, but here you see my testbed with all functionality exposed, where i stress-test things to make sure there are no bugs

most artwork was done by Mike Hansen [link] with some small things here and there done by me


The code used in the above application is the intellectual property of the State of Minnesota.