Zeeman Heartbeat Model Documents

This material has 4 associated documents. Select a document title to view a document's information.

Main Document

Zeeman Heartbeat Model 

written by Tyler Murray

The Zeeman Heartbeat Model uses work in Catastrophe Theory to create a simulation of the heartbeat cycle.  The heart is represented as a blue circle in phase space and travels from diastole to systole which are represented as the green circles.  Cardiac muscle fiber length (x) is represented on the y-axis and electrochemical activity (b) is represented on the x-axis.  The model calculates the heart rate (in beats per minute) and a variable called gamma which is intrinsic to the pacemaker.

The model allows the user to adjust several variables, including muscle tension and the location of diastole and systole, to see how the heart rate is affected.  Adjust tension by moving the slider at the top of the display or by manually entering a number into the field.  Adjust the location of diastole and systole by either dragging them or entering values into the fields at the bottom of the display.

The Zeeman Heartbeat Model was developed as a final project in a sophomore-level Computational Physics course (Phy 200) using the Easy Java JavaScript Simulation (EjsS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.   Double clicking the jar file will run the program if Java is installed.  You can modify this simulation if you have EJS installed by right-clicking within the map and selecting "Open Ejs Model" from the pop-up menu item.

Published May 15, 2014
Last Modified October 8, 2014

This file has previous versions.

Supplemental Documents (2)

Zeeman Heartbeat Project Report 

Final project report for Zeeman Heartbeat Model.

Last Modified June 7, 2014

This file is included in the full-text index.

Zeeman Heartbeat Project Poster 

Davidson College student Research Symposium poster presentation.

Last Modified June 7, 2014

This file is included in the full-text index.

Source Code Documents

Zeeman Heartbeat Source Code 

The source code zip archive contains an XML representation of the Simple Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Protein Folding Model.   Unzip this archive in your EjsS workspace to compile and run this model using EjsS ver 5.

Last Modified June 7, 2014