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| Small polystyrene beads are trapped using optical gradient forces from a focused laser. | These images are then loaded into a script which looks at the position of the bead in each frame; to the computer each framed is a complicated landscape. |
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| Taken together the distribution of positions for the bead maps out the probability distribution of the bead in the trap. | Using the probablity distribution one can find the energy landscape to which the bead was originally subjected. |