Figure (a) shows the activation barrier (increase in ReaxFF internal energy from the initial configuration to isomerization) as a function of target torsion angle. The simulations reveal a significant decrease in the energy barrier needed to activate the isomerization reaction caused by the many-body molecular strain. A deformation of 30 in the selected dihedral angle reduces the activation energy by 1 eV, or one third. Renderings of the reaction pathway are available in S4 in the SI. The central rotation studied here does not greatly affect the reaction path or product state of the reaction, which an understanding of is critical to the engineering of mechanophores to perform a variety of capabilities.