Second week has come to a close and third week starts up tomorrow… Scary? Exciting? Both! We are more than half way through the block – we have leaned so much yet still have so much to learn! At this point in any block, you are fully submerged in the material of your course yet haven’t been exposed to what may be the most exciting part of it. You have done what seems to be loads of work and (try to) remain hopeful and excited for all the new material that has yet to come!
My first three blocks consisted of my double block FYE Freedom and Authority followed by Intro to Poetry. While both of these were highly reading and writing intensive classes, biophysics has proven to expose my rusty math and science skills. Being thrown back into a way of thinking and problem solving I haven’t practiced in over 6 months has been both terrifying and exhilarating. Though, most of the terror existed only in the first day or two of biophysics and was quickly replaced with excitement.
Biophysics, although easily perceived as an advanced science course, has proven to be ideal for both exposing and treating and my rusty math and science skills. The course has no required prerequisites, therefore all the basic physics formulas and concepts are taught as part of the course. Since this is my first blog post and it’s pretty late in the block, I will summarize some of the main topics we have covered thus far here:
We have covered many physics tools and have applied them to several different biological problem sets. We started with simple kinematic equations and applied them to both pendulums and projectiles. We explored how a human leg can behave more or less like a simple pendulum and from there we could solve for a persons walking speed based on the same variables. We even compared these findings to what they would be on the moon ! This helped us better understand how specific variables behave within a formula while also providing us with some cool knowledge about what walking ad jumping would be like on the moon! We then transitioned from kinematics to exploring forces and Newton’s three laws. We used forces (along with previous knowledge of kinematics) to calculate heights of jumps and how they varied from problems which involved running and jumping together. After this, we learned about energy – my personal favorite physics concept/tool! We explored many different types of energy and was able to translate them to nearly every concept covered previously. We then moved from learning the biophysics of physical actions one has direct control over and started to explore the physics of fluids and the circulatory system. The circulatory system proved to be extremely fascinating to learn about, not only because it is what literally keeps us alive, but because it is something we are unconscious of in every day life. We learned about density, pressure, flow rate, viscosity, and many more important concepts related to the movement and behavior of fluid. Exploring the incredible complexity of just one system within our body makes all the duties our bodies do for us seem quite magical. This pretty much sums up what we have covered up until Friday.
Friday’s class introduced probably the most complex idea we’ve looked at thus far in the class. We had a guest speaker, Phoebe Lostroh (a professor from the molecular biology department), come in and discuss what proteins are, how they are made, their structure, function, and essentially their importance to life of earth. This provided the class with a baseline of knowledge which would then help us to fully understand central dogma and eventually Florence microscopy. We covered many things which are essential to understanding florescence microscopy which I will not bore you with… but its all seriously cool stuff – if you don’t know anything about it, I suggest looking into it!
This block started out pretty light while most the physics and applications were review to me. But, fear not, it certainly picked up. This last week especially has proven to challenge me the most. I feel the “challenge” I am referring to is mainly rooted in the conceptual applications and not so much the physics knowledge. As we use different biological applications, we naturally learn things about those specific subjects which may be (and have proven to be this last week to me) completely new. That is what has made this class challenging and interesting at the same time! What could be better than to try to understand how living things work, move, and interact through exploring the physics behind them?!
I am looking forward to the last full week of biophysics and will be updating you along the way!
