Brownian ratchet a heat bath in that they undergo random Brownian motion with a mean kinetic energy that is determined by the temperature. The device is imagined as being small enough that the impulse from a single molecular collision can turn the paddle. Although such collisions would tend to turn the rod in either direction with equal probability, the pawl allows the ratchet to rotate in one direction only. The net effect of many such random collisions would seem to be that the ratchet rotates continuously in that direction. The ratchet's motion then can be used to do work on other systems,
Brownian motor bias the motion of a particle (like an ion or polypeptide); the result would essentially be diffusion of a particle whose net motion is strongly biased in one direction. The translocation of the particle would only be loosely coupled to hydrolysis of ATP. The dynamics and activity of Brownian motors are current topics of study in theoretical and experimental biophysics. Brownian motors are sometimes modeled using the Fokker-Planck equation or with Monte Carlo methods. Many researchers are presently engaged in understanding how molecular-scale motors operate in environments with non-negligible thermal noise. The thermodynamics of such motors is constrained by the