BPHY 304 — Biophysics and Bio-imaging
This cornerstone biophysics course is designed to introduce students to classical and modern topics in biophysics, and to provide them with laboratory experiences that illustrate biophysical principles discussed in class. A unique aspect of this class is the attempt to package classical and new topics in biophysics, at a level that is accessible to all students who have taken only the standard introductory, calculus-based physics classes. The content and design of this class is credited largely to the very bright students who over the years helped me shape this course into what it is today.
find out about the biophysics curriculum at Centenary
Online Textbook
Our lecture notes take you to the various topics covered in this class, which are a synthesis of my notes and student feedback accumulated since I began teaching this class in the Fall of 1997. These notes are now written in textbook format, thanks to one of my former students, Kathryn Thompson, now a graduate student at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. In addition to her skillful writing, she also helped re-organize the material and augmented some of the topics with her own examples. Many of the illustrations were made by an artistically talented biophysics student, Meredith Stewart, who is now a student of traditional Chinese medicine.
If you are a visitor from outside our campus and find these notes of interest, please feel free to use them for non-commercial purposes. We would also appreciate receiving any feedback or suggestions that might help us improve the material.
Ways to View the Notes
- You can view them in a virtual ebook format (it has a table of contents).
- You can download the all of the notes as a single 5M PDF.
- You can download individual chapters:
- Animal Locomotion
- Fluid Mechaniscs of the Circulatory System
- Wave Phenomena in Hearing
- Heating and Cooling of the Body
- Optics in Vision and Eyesight Correction
- Light Absorption and Color in Biomolecules
- The Behavior of Photoexcited Biomolecules
- Statistical Mechanics in Biology
- Experimental Determination of Protein Structure
- BioImaging
- Nerve Conduction
Laboratory Experiments
The physics of walking
Blood flow: fluid flow through a pipe
Hearing range, decibels and loudness, resonance of the ear canal, and spectrum of speech
Heat dissipation from the body: radiant heat, evaporative cooling, and heat conduction
Visual acuity
Absorption of light by bio-molecules
Emission properties of bio-molecules
Energy transfer in photosynthesis
Protein folding
Fluorescence microscopy
Computed tomography
Ultrasound imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging