About a recent paper on biological light emission. Do you emit light? The naive answer is no. None of us light up a room as we enter, other than perhaps metaphorically. The intermediate level answer, familiar to undergraduate physics majors, is yes — not by virtue of being alive but because of fundamental thermodynamics: everything … Continue reading The Bright Side of Life (Literally)
This past term I taught my “Biophysics for non-science majors” course, actually called “The Physics of Life,” for the first time since 2018, and, more notably, for the first time since writing my pop-science book, So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World (blog post; Amazon) — published in 2022 (and … Continue reading Course recap: “The Physics of Life” Winter 2024
Usually when I write about biophysics, it’s with the uplifting message that understanding physics helps us make sense of biology, bringing varied phenomena together under umbrellas of general principles. This is true, and there are countless examples. Brownian motion explains the meandering of neurotransmitters and the patterning of embryonic body segments. Electrical interactions influence the … Continue reading Enhance Your Productivity by Ignoring Biophysics
Several times so far I’ve taught a graduate course on biophysics. Last term I taught it again, but with a twist: it was a combined graduate and undergraduate course. There were two motivations for this. First, biophysics is unfamiliar enough to physics graduate students that upper-division undergraduates aren’t at any significant disadvantage. In fact, I’ve … Continue reading Recap of a Graduate (and Undergraduate!) Biological Physics Course
I’ve taught several times a graduate course on biophysics, the first instance of which I blogged about here. I love teaching this class, and students seem fond of it as well. I’m teaching it again next Fall (2023) but with a twist: it will now be a combined undergraduate / graduate course. The motivations are … Continue reading Introduction to Biological Physics — an old and new course
Descriptions of my general-audience book on biophysics are scattered across multiple blog posts, in some cases with outdated information like old versions of the title. Since it’s useful to have one definitive post to point to, here it is! So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World is a popular-science book … Continue reading “So Simple A Beginning,” A Popular Science Book about Biophysics
Update November 22, 2021: The final, published article is here. Update June 18, 2021: A preprint of my article is here. Over a year ago, I was invited to write a “resource letter” on Biological Physics for the American Journal of Physics, a very good education-focused journal. The goal of its resource letters is to … Continue reading Welcome to Biophysics! — A “Resource Letter”
I’ve hit “send” on the final manuscript files for my popular science book on biophysics. The last round of revisions and edits took all the time I could spare over the past three months, and lots of time that I couldn’t! I should write a new, up to date summary of the book, but this … Continue reading Pop-Science Biophysics, now with a title!
A while ago I announced that I’ve been working on a popular science book about biophysics, and a few months ago I noted that the first draft is done. Since people have asked about the present state of the book, I thought I’d make a quick post about it. Princeton University Press sent the manuscript … Continue reading Book Update: Untitled Biophysics
On July 4, I finished a draft of the fourth and final part of Building Life, my popular-science book on biophysics. There’s still a lot to revise, based in part on comments from my editor and others on Parts 1-3 and, I’m sure, comments to come on Part 4, but nonetheless I’m delighted to say … Continue reading Book draft done!
The Eighteenth Elephant 