Part I
Getting Started with Biophysics
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In this part . . .
Get a thorough overview of what biophysics is, including its diverse fields, such as biomechanics, fluids, waves and sound, the electromagnetic force, and medical physics, so you can fully appreciate how it affects your daily life.
Discover where you can find biophysics. You may be surprised to know who biophysicists are and where biophysics is used.
Tackle mathematics, most of which should be a review for you if you’ve already taken a chemistry, physics, or calculus class. Biophysics does use mathematics, so having a decent grasp of the basic formulas and equations is important when you study biophysics.
Comprehend some of the basics of biophysics, such as notation and terminology, that aren’t used in everyday life and clear up a few common myths.
Make the distinction between experimental and theoretical biophysics. Biophysics isn’t mathematics, but mathematics is a tool used by both experimental and theoretical biophysicists.
Chapter 1
Welcoming You to the World of Biophysics
In This Chapter
Identifying biophysics in the every day
Biophysics is the study of biology and all sciences connected to the biological sciences using the principles and laws of physics. It’s the ultimate interdisciplinary science combining biology, chemistry, and physics. If you love science, then biophysics is for you. The field touches on all aspects of all the natural sciences.
This chapter gives you the bird’s-eye view of biophysics and what you’ll find in this book. In this chapter, I explain the general features of biomechanics, the motion of fluids, waves and sounds, and electromagnetic force as well as radiation and radioactivity.
Getting the Lowdown on What Biophysics Really Is
No matter if you’re stuck taking a biophysics course to meet your science course requirements or you’re taking your first of many biophysics courses, you need to make sure you understand what you’re studying. Just break down the word biophysics. Bio means life and physics means nature, so biophysics is the study of living matter, its motion, and its interaction with the natural universe. Chapter 2 expands on the explanation of what biophysics is, and Chapter 3 covers some of the basic terminology used in biophysics.
The following clarifies what biophysics really means:
Biophysics uses techniques and methods from physics, mathematics, biology, and chemistry to study living organisms.
Biophysicists design experiments or do computational calculations in order to understand biological processes. A few examples of these biological processes are
• Photosynthesis
• The on-off switching of genes
• Memory and brain processes
• Muscle control
Biophysicists study how the senses work.
Biophysicists try to understand why things behave the way they do in sports and improve the performance of athletes.
Biophysicists study how molecules enter cells and how they interact.
Biophysicists study how cells move, divide, and respond to the environment.
As you can see, biophysics is all of this and everything that deals with living organisms. Biophysics plays an essential role in medicine, sports, engineering, physics, biology, biochemistry, and environmental science to mention a few areas. Whenever you’re considering something that involves a living organism and its interaction with its surroundings, you’re using biophysics.
Grasping the Mechanics of Biomechanics
Biomechanics is an important part of biophysics. Bio means life, and mechanics is the study of the interaction of a physical object with its surroundings. Therefore, biomechanics is the study of a living object’s interaction with its surroundings, which also includes the study of how living organisms move and the causes of this motion.
These sections explain a bit more about what biomechanics is. I discuss rules because biophysicists love rules, explain what happens when forces try to change an object’s motion, and look at the motion of an object.
Surveying the rules
Biomechanics has many rules because things don’t happen randomly or by chance. Things happen because of actions, and these rules tell you what the consequences of an action are. These rules are usually called laws, which can’t be broken.
Some important laws in biomechanics are
Newton’s first law of motion, the law of inertia: This law tel...