Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2014
Volume 59, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 3–7, 2014; Denver, Colorado
Session B11: Focus Session: Teaching at the Intersection of Physics and Biology |
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Sponsoring Units: DBIO Chair: Mark Reeves, The George Washington University Room: 203 |
Monday, March 3, 2014 11:15AM - 11:51AM |
B11.00001: Cultivating the Physical Biology Mindset Invited Speaker: Rob Phillips Biological experiments now regularly result in data that emphasize functional relationships between key parameters such as level of gene expression and number of transcription factors or motor velocity and applied force. This trend towards quantitative dissection of biological problems has been acknowledged explicitly in learned reports such as ``Bio2010'' and the recent NAS report ``A New Biology for the 21st Century.'' These reports repeatedly emphasize the need for a new biology characterized by what one might call ``biological numeracy'' and for overhauling biological education in a way that is consistent with this kind of biological research. In this talk, I will describe my own experience in introducing courses aimed at introducing physical biology both in the lecture hall and in the laboratory. One of the most interesting aspects of the physics-biology interface is the question of what constitutes understanding and here, I will describe my views on the role of polarizing predictions as a test of such understanding with special emphasis on examples from signaling and regulation. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 11:51AM - 12:03PM |
B11.00002: Resources and approaches for teaching physics to pre-health and life science majors Ralf Widenhorn As science is advancing, the skill set for a physician or medical researcher today and in the future is very different than it has been in the past. As an example, the American Association of Medical Colleges revised the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) to reflect this dynamic environment. Because of these changes, the needs of students entering into these professions are often not met by a traditional physics course. Developing curriculum for an introductory physics course that helps to prepare life science and pre-health students can be challenging for many physics instructors who lack a strong foundation in biology or medicine. This presentation will address various approaches that physics instructors without a background in life sciences can use to successfully teach an introductory physics course for life science and pre-heath students. For these courses, an online resource may be a useful tool. Online resources already exist today, but their utility relies on active engagement and sharing of teaching material by physics instructors possessing a background in both physics and the life sciences. This talk will address ways for the biomedical physics community to contribute to this effort. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 12:03PM - 12:15PM |
B11.00003: Teaching wave phenomena via biophysical applications Daniel Reich, Mark Robbins, Robert Leheny, Steven Wonnell Over the past several years we have developed a two-semester second-year physics course sequence for students in the biosciences, tailored in part to the needs of undergraduate biophysics majors. One semester, ``Biological Physics,'' is based on the book of that name by P. Nelson. This talk will focus largely on the other semester, ``Wave Phenomena with Biophysical Applications,'' where we provide a novel introduction to the physics of waves, primarily through the study of experimental probes used in the biosciences that depend on the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter. Topic covered include: Fourier analysis, sound and hearing, diffraction - culminating in an analysis of x-ray fiber diffraction and its use in the determination of the structure of DNA - geometrical and physical optics, the physics of modern light microscopy, NMR and MRI. Laboratory exercises tailored to this course will also be described. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 12:15PM - 12:27PM |
B11.00004: Experiences Gained Creating a Biophysics Major at a Predominately Undergraduate Institution Justin Link, Steven Herbert Xavier University, a liberal arts predominately undergraduate institution (PUI) located in Cincinnati, OH, implemented a Biophysics major in the Department of Physics in spring 2012. The program is built upon foundational physics courses and is unique due to the possible selection of upper-division courses that students elect to take towards their undergraduate degree. A capstone course is offered to bring all prior knowledge in the fundamental sciences together to approach complex problems in biology. Due to the flexibility of the program, it serves students well who are interested in pursuing advanced degrees in Biophysics or Biomedical Engineering. It also offers students interested in the health professions an alternate path towards medical school which can be advantageous in the application process. This session will express some of the advantages and challenges to creating such a program at a liberal arts PUI and discuss the capstone course within the major. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 12:27PM - 1:03PM |
B11.00005: Supporting students in building interdisciplinary connections across physics and biology Invited Speaker: Chandra Turpen Our research team\footnote{This work has been done with Benjamin Dreyfus, Benjamin Geller, Julia Svoboda Gouvea, Wolfgang Losert, Edward Redish, and Vashti Sawtelle.} has been engaged in the iterative redesign of an Introductory Physics course for Life Science (IPLS) majors to explicitly bridge biology and physics in ways that are authentic to the disciplines. Our interdisciplinary course provides students opportunities to examine how modeling decisions (e.g. knowing when and how to use different concepts, identifying implicit assumptions, making and justifying assumptions) may differ depending on canonical disciplinary aims and interests. Our focus on developing students' interdisciplinary reasoning skills requires 1) shifting course topics to focus on core ideas that span the disciplines, 2) shifting epistemological expectations, and 3) foregrounding typically tacit disciplinary assumptions. In working to build an authentic interdisciplinary course that bridges physics and biology, we pay careful attention to supporting \textit{students} in constructing these bridges. This course has been shown to have important impacts: a) students seek meaningful connections between the disciplines, b) students perceive relevance and utility of ideas from different disciplines, and c) students reconcile challenging disciplinary ideas. Although our focus has been on building interdisciplinary coherence, we have succeeded in maintaining strong student learning gains on fundamental physics concepts and allowed students to deepen their understanding of challenging concepts in thermodynamics. This presentation will describe the shifts in course content and the modern pedagogical approaches that have been integrated into the course, and provide an overview of key research results from this project. These results may aid physicists in reconsidering how they can meaningfully reach life-science students. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 1:03PM - 1:15PM |
B11.00006: Energy as a Unifying Theme for a Models Approach to Instruction Stephen Tsui, Clarisa Guelman, Charles De Leone Biological science students who are accustomed to transmission-based modes of instruction are often challenged by the model-based problem solving that is unique to physics. To address this challenge, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) adapted a UC Davis originated models-based curriculum for the introductory physics course for life-science majors. In this approach, the course content sequence was recast, such that energy and thermal physics is studied first, as opposed to kinematics. Throughout the sequence, unifying ideas of energy models and model-based problem solving are explicitly emphasized. We will present a brief description of this course and discuss how the models-based approach has been realized at CSUSM, along with presenting evidence of associated student outcomes from our 12-year experience with this course. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 1:15PM - 1:27PM |
B11.00007: Biotic games and cloud experimentation as novel media for biophysics education Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, Paulo Blikstein First-hand, open-ended experimentation is key for effective formal and informal biophysics education. We developed, tested and assessed multiple new platforms that enable students and children to directly interact with and learn about microscopic biophysical processes: (1) Biotic games that enable local and online play using galvano- and photo-tactic stimulation of micro-swimmers, illustrating concepts such as biased random walks, Low Reynolds number hydrodynamics, and Brownian motion; (2) an undergraduate course where students learn optics, electronics, micro-fluidics, real time image analysis, and instrument control by building biotic games; and (3) a graduate class on the biophysics of multi-cellular systems that contains a cloud experimentation lab enabling students to execute open-ended chemotaxis experiments on slimemolds online, analyze their data, and build biophysical models. Our work aims to generate the equivalent excitement and educational impact for biophysics as robotics and video games have had for mechatronics and computer science, respectively. We also discuss how scaled-up cloud experimentation systems can support MOOCs with true lab components and life-science research in general. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 1:27PM - 1:39PM |
B11.00008: A course on physical models of living systems Philip Nelson What is a ``Physical model'' of a biological system? Are such models valuable for students? I'll describe some mechanical systems incorporating feedback control: the governor, toggle, and relaxation oscillator. Students who understand these systems at a tactile level, seeing them in action in the classroom, gain a better understanding of control networks arising in cellular homeostasis, program switching, and the cell cycle respectively. Moreover, I've found that some students respond better to physical ideas when they are motivated by biological examples; in this light, studying physical models of living systems can actually enhance learning of physics itself. I'll give details of an undergraduate course dedicated to topics like these, which attracts students from many different majors, and describe resources I've made available for constructing such courses. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 1:39PM - 1:51PM |
B11.00009: Initial experience with a calculus-based IPLS course at Vanderbilt M. Shane Hutson, Erin C. Rericha By implementing research results from the PER community, we have designed a new calculus-based IPLS course and began teaching two sections of this course in Fall 2013, both taught by biological physicists. This course differs from Vanderbilt's other introductory physics offerings in two major ways. First, it seeks to implement PER-based active learning strategies including just-in-time teaching, peer instruction and context-rich problems. The latter are specifically designed within biomedical contexts. Second, the course content has been chosen to closely align with the core competencies delineated in the HHMI-AAMC report \textit{Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians}. We provide students with a very explicit accounting (in the syllabus) of how this course will contribute to 5 of the 8 \textit{SFFP}-competencies and 21 of its 37 learning objectives. Throughout the course and associated labs, we make repeated, explicit and hopefully authentic connections between physics and the life sciences. The chosen text reinforces our approach through well-developed biomedical applications of physics concepts. We will report what we've seen work and not work in our first implementation of an IPLS course and detail results regarding student learning and student attitudes towards physics. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 1:51PM - 2:03PM |
B11.00010: The Physics of Life: A Biophysics Course for Non-science Major Undergraduates Raghuveer Parthasarathy Enhancing the scientific literacy of non-scientists is an important goal, both because of the ever-increasing impact of science and technology on people's lives, and because understanding contemporary science enables enriching insights into the workings of nature. One route to improving scientific literacy is via general education undergraduate courses - i.e. courses intended for students not majoring in the sciences or engineering - which in many cases provide these students' last formal exposure to science. I describe here a course on biophysics for non-science-major undergraduates recently developed at the University of Oregon. Biophysics, I claim, is a particularly useful vehicle for addressing scientific literacy. It involves important and general scientific concepts, demonstrates connections between basic science and tangible, familiar phenomena related to health and disease, and illustrates how scientific insights proceed not in predictable paths, but rather by applying tools and perspectives from disparate fields in creative ways. In addition, it highlights the far-reaching impact of physics research. I describe the general design of this course and the specific content of a few of its modules, as well as noting aspects of enrollment and evaluation. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, March 3, 2014 2:03PM - 2:15PM |
B11.00011: Toward Better Physics Labs for Future Biologists John Giannini, Kim Moore, Wolfgang Losert We have developed a set of laboratories and hands on activities to accompany a new two-semester interdisciplinary physics course that has been successfully developed and tested in two small test classes of students at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) in 2012-2013, and is currently being used on a wider scale. We have designed the laboratories to be taken accompanying a reformed course in the student's second year, with calculus, biology, and chemistry as prerequisites. This permits the laboratories to include significant content on physics relevant to cellular scales, from chemical interactions to random motion and charge screening in fluids. One major focus of the laboratories is to introduce the students to research-grade equipment and modern physics analysis tools in contexts relevant to biology, while maintaining the pedagogically valuable open-ended laboratory structure of reformed laboratories. Lab development procedures along with some preliminary student results from these two small test classes are discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
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