 Very commonly, these points are referred to as "beads "due to an analogy of a set of beads connected by strings or springs, which connect the reactant and products.The series of beads is often initially created by interpolating between and , for example, for a series of beads, bead might be given by

formula_2

where .Each of the beads has an energy, , and forces, and these are treated with a constrained optimization process that seeks to get an as accurate as possible representation of the reaction pathway.