BALLS ON MA STICK?????

Explain this paragraph about the ball and stick model of drawing molecules to a lay-fag:

Ball and stick model:

A problem with rigid bonds and holes is that systems with arbitrary angles could not be built. This can be overcome with flexible bonds, originally helical springs but now usually plastic. This also allows double and triple bonds to be approximated by multiple single bonds (Fig. 3).

more halp required: 

"At the same time, the C H and C C bonds are vibrating like a spring at rates as fast as 9 x 1013 s^-1. "

please explain to me what that S stands for. It means per second. but WHAT per second.

vibrations per sexond

thanks, that clears that up. but what about ball and stick ?

>>4
It's just saying that the pretend molecule construction kits made out of wood couldn't show double or triple bonds by flexing the connector sticks but then they had metal spring connectors and flexible plastic so now it's doable to make models of such bonds.  The placement of the holes that I've seen is 4 per ball, arranged tetrahedrally if you know what I mean, so that they are as far apart from each other as they could be.

More generally, ball-and-stick is a conceptual model that you can have in your mind when you think about molecules, or see in a drawing or computer graphic.