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Grotthuss Mechanism (2D): Proton Hopping vs. Ion Diffusion

2D Grotthuss relay lab: watch an excess proton hop across a hydrogen-bonded water chain via real stochastic bond-hop trials, run side by side against an ordinary ion's unbiased random walk, with a live hop-count, distance and speedup readout.

Chemistry & Materials2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D companion runs the same real stochastic hopping model as the 3D chain view on a flat, readable canvas: a proton (or hydroxide vacancy) advances across nine hydrogen-bonded water molecules through genuine per-attempt Math.random() trials whose success probability is set by the chosen network quality, species and temperature, while a second track shows an ordinary ion taking an unbiased 50/50 random walk on the same attempt cadence — so the reason proton transport in water outruns normal ion diffusion by roughly four to ten times is visible directly in the live hop-count, distance and speedup readout rather than asserted in prose.

⚙ Under the hood

2D Grotthuss relay lab: each hop attempt is a real trial against a network-quality- and temperature-dependent probability (0.82 base for a well-connected network down to 0.05 for a highly disordered one, with an Arrhenius-like thermal modifier and a slower multiplier for OH- versus H3O+), plotted against an ordinary ion's genuine unbiased random walk on the same time base.

grotthuss mechanismproton transferhydrogen bondingion diffusionacid-base chemistrywater structure

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install