⚡ Gel Electrophoresis — 3D
A genuine WebGL/Three.js companion to the 2D gel electrophoresis simulator: charged DNA fragments migrate through a real orbitable 3D gel slab between glowing cathode and anode plates, driven by the identical size-sieving migration math and live log-log calibration as the original.
Why render gel electrophoresis in 3D
A real electrophoresis gel is a physical slab with thickness, sitting between two electrode plates — a shape the flat 2D canvas can only imply with a top-down cross-section. This companion keeps the exact migration model of the 2D original — the same frac = K·V / (gel·sizen) · t/60 migration formula, the same n = 0.35 + 0.25·gel sieving exponent, the same 1.6 sim-minutes-per-real-second playback and √t diffusion spread — but builds a real gel volume in Three.js with a dark cathode plate glowing blue at the top and an anode plate glowing red at the bottom, wells cut into the gel surface, and each fragment rendered as a true 3D sphere that grows and dims as it separates from its lane-mates, all of which you can orbit and inspect from any angle.
The ladder calibration panel — the tool real labs use to size an unknown band — is drawn live onto a canvas-texture plane that floats beside the gel slab inside the same 3D scene and always turns to face the camera, using the exact same log(size) vs log(distance) plot and inverse-estimate formula as the 2D version. Adjust the voltage slider to speed every band up proportionally, drag the gel % slider to trade resolution for run speed, and switch between the standard, forensic and PCR-check presets to compare how differently-sized fragment sets separate under the same field.