N = 9 Transition Movie
The rearrangement of the N = 9 cluster is a "buckling" action. At the beginning of the movie below, the front rectangle has its long axis pointing north-south, and the back rectangle has its long axis (blue spheres) pointing east-west. At the end of the movie the cluster has "buckled" and the long axis of the front and back rectangle have changed to east-west, and north-south respectively. An alternate way to see the transiton is as the rotation of two fixed triangles of spheres, each composed of a pink, blue and green sphere. Below, the central sphere is colored silver and the outer spheres are colored green, blue, and pink, to highlight the action. There are three ways this rearrangement can occur. This movie is generated from a simulations, where the spheres are slightly soft. In the simulation Λ = 0.7356, or slightly less than the hard sphere ΛT=0.7418.
