Extracting nontrivial work from ordinary chemical reactions

This laboratory has been investigating how chemical reactions exemplify active matter. Testing this hypothesis experimentally, we place chiral gear-shaped objects within this environment. Our optical microscopy observations show that achiral gears rotate preferentially – clockwise and anticlockwise, according to the circumstances – as anticipated for active matter. Step-size distributions are especially informative when considering how they track the chemical reaction kinetics, from far-from-equilibrium to the equilibrium state.  Our earlier observations of this motion in an inorganic chemical reaction are now supplemented by measurements in an environment with catalytic enzymes.