Dynamic Light Scattering — Nanoparticle Sizing Lab (2D)

Dynamic light scattering (DLS) is the workhorse technique behind most reported nanoparticle "sizes" — it never images a single particle. Instead it watches how fast a laser speckle pattern decorrelates as suspended nanoparticles jiggle under Brownian motion, and inverts that decay time through the Stokes–Einstein relation to recover a hydrodynamic radius. This 2D top-down simulator animates real particles diffusing in a laser-illuminated cuvette, sums their scattered field at a detector placed at an adjustable angle, and computes the intensity autocorrelation function g₂(τ) live from that simulated light — exactly the calculation a real DLS instrument performs — while a separate readout shows what a real instrument would report at your chosen radius, temperature, viscosity and angle. Drag the cuvette to pan the view and scroll to zoom.