TeX

The TeXbook,
by Donald Knuth.

Russ Hobbie and I wrote the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology using TeX, the typesetting program developed by Donald Knuth. Well, not really. We actually used LaTeX, a document markup language based on TeX. To be honest, “we” didn’t even use LaTeX: Russ did all the typesetting with LaTeX while I merely read pdf files and sent back comments and suggestions.

TeX is particularly well suited for writing equations, of which there are many in Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. I used TeX in graduate school, while working in John Wikswo’s laboratory at Vanderbilt University. This was back in the days before LaTeX was invented, and writing equations in TeX was a bit like programming in machine language. I remember sitting at my desk with Knuth’s TeXbook (blue, spiral bound, and delightful), worrying about arcane details of typesetting some complicated expression. At that time, TeX was new and unique. When I first arrived at Vanderbilt in 1982, Wikswo’s version of TeX did not even have a WYSIWYG editor, and our lab did not have a laser printer, so I would make a few changes in the TeX document and then run down the hall to the computer center to inspect my printout. As you can imagine, after several iterations of this process the novelty of TeX wore off. But, oh, did our papers look good when we shipped them out to the journal (and, yes, we did mail paper copies; no electronic submission back then). Often, I thought our version looked better than what was published. By the way, Donald Knuth is a fascinating man. Check out his website at http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth. He pays $2.56 to readers who find an error in his books (according to Knuth, 256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar). Russ Hobbie used to pay a quarter for errors, and all I give is a few lousy extra credit points to my students.

I must confess, now-a-days I use the equation editor in Microsoft Word for writing equations. Word’s output doesn’t look as nice as TeX’s, but I find it easier to use. The solution manual for the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology is written entirely using Word (email Russ or me for a copy), and so is the errata. But I did reacquaint myself with TeX when writing my Scholarpedia article about the bidomain model. Both Wikipedia and Scholarpedia use some sort of TeX hybrid for equations.

Listen to Donald Knuth describe his work.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nyCW279KCM4

In The Beat of a Heart

In the Beat of a Heart:
Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature,
by John Whitfield.

Over Christmas break, I read In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature, by John Whitfield. I had mixed feelings about the book. I didn’t have much interest in the parts dealing with biodiversity in tropical forests and skimmed through them rather quickly. But other parts I found fascinating. One of the main topics explored in the book is Kleiber’s law (metabolic rate scales as the 3/4th power of body mass), which Russ Hobbie and I discuss in Chapter 2 of the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. But the book has a broader goal: to compare and contrast the approaches of physicists and biologists to understanding life. The main idea can be summarized by the subtitle of the textbook I studied biology out of when an undergraduate at the University of Kansas: The Unity and Diversity of Life. Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology lies on the “unity” side of this great divide, but the interplay of these two views of life makes for a remarkable story.

The book begins with a Prologue about D’Arcy Thompson (Whitfield calls him “the last Victorian scientist”), author of the influential, if out-of-the-mainstream, book On Growth and Form.

This is the story—with some detours—of D’Arcy Thompson’s strand of biology and of a century-long attempt to build a unified theory, based on the laws of physics and mathematics, of how living things work. At the story’s heart is the study of something that Thompson called “a great theme”—the role of energy in life... The way that energy affects life depends on the size of living things. Size is the most important single notion in our attempt to understand energy’s role in nature. Here, again, we shall be following Thompson’s example. After its introduction, On Growth and Form ushers the reader into a physical view of living things with a chapter titled “On Magnitude,” which looks at the effects of body size on biology, a field called biological scaling.

In the Beat of a Heart examines Max Rubner’s idea that metabolism scales with surface area (2/3rd power), and Max Kleiber’s modification of this rule to a 3/4th power. It then describes the attempt of physicist Geoffrey West and ecologist Brian Enquist to explain this rule by modeling the fractal networks that provide the raw materials needed to maintain metabolism. While I was familiar with much of this story before reading Whitfield’s book, I nevertheless found the historical context and biographical background engrossing. Then came the lengthy section on forest ecology (Zzzzzzzzz). I soldiered on and was rewarded by a penetrating final chapter comparing the physicist’s and biologist’s points of view.

Finding a unity of nature would not make studying the details of nature obsolete. Indeed, finding unity depends on understanding the details. The variability of life means that in biology the ability to generalize is not enough. If you've measured one electron, you've measured them all, but, as I saw in Costa Rica, to understand a forest you must be able to see the trees, and that takes a botanist. Thinkers such as Humboldt, Darwin, and Wallace gained their understanding of how nature works from years of intimate experience of nature in the flesh and the leaf. And yet they were not just interested in what their senses told them: they also tried to abstract and unify. The combination of attributes--intrepid and reflective, naturalist and mathematician--strikes me as rather rare, and becoming more so. These days scientific lone wolves such as D’Arcy Thompson are almost extinct, and it would take a truly awesome polymath to acquire the necessary suite of skills in natural history, ecology, mathematics, and physics to devise a theory as complex as fractal networks.

The book ends with a provoking question and answer that sums up the debate nicely:

Is nature beautifully simple or beautifully complex? Yes, it is.

More about In the Beat of a Heart can be found at the book’s website: http://www.inthebeatofaheart.com.

BIO2010

2010 is finally here. Happy New Year! Let’s celebrate by discussing the National Research Council report BIO2010.

In 2003 the NRC released the report BIO2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. If I had to sum up the report in one phrase, it would be “they are signing our song.” In the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I incorporate many of the ideas championed in BIO2010. The preface of the report recommends

a comprehensive reevaluation of undergraduate science education for future biomedical researchers. In particular it calls for a renewed discussion on the ways that engineering and computer science, as well as chemistry, physics, and mathematics are presented to life science students. The conclusions of the report are based on input from chemists, physicists, and mathematicians, not just practicing research biologists. The committee recognizes that all undergraduate science education is interconnected. Changes cannot be made solely to benefit future biomedical researchers. The impact on undergraduates studying other types of biology, as well as other sciences, cannot be ignored as reforms are considered. The Bio2010 report therefore provides ideas and options suitable for various academic situations and diverse types of institutions. It is hoped that the reader will use these possibilities to initiate discussions on the goals and methods of teaching used within their own department, institution, or professional society.

The executive summary begins

The interplay of the recombinant DNA, instrumentation, and digital revolutions has profoundly transformed biological research. The confluence of these three innovations has led to important discoveries, such as the mapping of the human genome. How biologists design, perform, and analyze experiments is changing swiftly. Biological concepts and models are becoming more quantitative, and biological research has become critically dependent on concepts and methods drawn from other scientific disciplines. The connections between the biological sciences and the physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science are rapidly becoming deeper and more extensive. The ways that scientists communicate, interact, and collaborate are undergoing equally rapid and dramatic transformations, which are driven by the accessibility of vast computing power and facile information exchange over the Internet.

Readers of this blog will be particularly interested in Recommendation #1.3 of the report, dealing with the physics education required by biologists, reproduced below. In the list of concepts the report considers essential, I have indicated in brackets the sections of the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology that address each topic. (I admit that the comparison of the report’s recommended physics topics to those topics covered in our book may be a bit unfair, because the report was referring to an introductory physics class, not an intermediate one.) Some of the connections between the report’s topics and sections in our book need additional elaboration, which I have included as footnotes.

Physics

RECOMMENDATION #1.3

The principles of physics are central to the understanding of biological processes, and are increasingly important in sophisticated measurements in biology. The committee recommends that life science majors master the key physics concepts listed below. Experience with these principles provides a simple context in which to learn the relationship between observations and mathematical description and modeling.

The typical calculus-based introductory physics course taught today was designed to serve the needs of physics, mathematics, and engineering students. It allocates a major block of time to electromagnetic theory and to many details of classical mechanics. In so doing, it does not provide the time needed for in-depth descriptions of the equally basic physics on which students can build an understanding of biology. By emphasizing exactly solvable problems, the course rarely illustrates the ways that physics can be applied to more recalcitrant problems. Illustrations involving modern biology are rarely given, and computer simulations are usually absent. Collective behaviors and systems far from equilibrium are not a traditional part of introductory physics. However, the whole notion of emergent behavior, pattern formation, and dynamical networks is so central to understanding biology, where it occurs in an extremely complex context, that it should be introduced first in physical systems, where all interactions and parameters can be clearly specified, and quantitative study is possible.

Concepts of Physics

Motion, Dynamics, and Force Laws

• Measurement¹: physical quantities [throughout], units [1.1, symbol list at the end of each chapter], time/length/mass [1.1], precision [none]
• Equations of motion²: position [Appendix B], velocity [Appendix B], acceleration [Appendix B], motion under gravity [2.7, Problem 1.28]
• Newton’s laws [1.8]: force [1.2], mass [1.12], acceleration [Appendix B], springs [Appendix F] and related material: stiffness³ [1.9], damping⁴ [1.14, 2.7, 10.6], exponential decay [2.2], harmonic motion [10.6]
• Gravitational [3.9] and spring [none] potential energy, kinetic energy [1.8], power [1.8], heat from dissipation [Problem 8.24], work [1.8]
• Electrostatic forces [6.2], charge [6.2], conductors/insulators [6.5], Coulomb’s law [6.2]
• Electric potential [6.4], current [6.8], units [6.2, 6.4, 6.6, 6.8], Ohm’s law [6.8]
• Capacitors [6.6], R [6.9] and RC [6.11] circuits
• Magnetic forces [8.1] and magnetic fields [8.2]
• Magnetic induction and induced currents [8.6]

Conservation Laws and Gobal [sic] Constraints

• Conservation of energy [3.3] and momentum⁵ [15.4]
• Conservation of charge [6.9, 7.9]
• First [3.3] and Second [3.19] Laws of thermodynamics

Thermal Processes at the Molecular Level

• Thermal motions: Brownian motion [3.10], thermal force (collisions) [none], temperature [3.5], equilibrium [3.5]
• Boltzmann’s law [3.7], kT [3.5], examples [3.8, 3.9, 3.10]
• Ideal gas statistical concepts using Boltzmann’s law, pressure [1.11]
• Diffusion limited dynamics⁶ [4.6], population dynamics [2.9, Problem 2.34]

Waves, Light, Optics, and Imaging

• Oscillators and waves [13.1]
• Geometrical optics: rays, lenses [14.12], mirrors⁷ [none]
• Optical instruments: microscopes and microscopy [Problem 14.45]
• Physical optics: interference [14.6.2] and diffraction [13.7]
• X-ray scattering [15.4] and structure determination [none]
• Particle in a box [none]; energy levels [3.2, 14.2]; spectroscopy from a quantum viewpoint [14.2, 14.3]
• Other microscopies⁸: electron [none], scanning tunneling [none], atomic force [none]

Collective Behaviors and Systems far from Equilibrium

• Liquids [1.11, 1.12, 1.14, 1.15], laminar flow [1.14], viscosity [1.14], turbulence [1.18]
• Phase transitions⁹ [Problem 3.57], pattern formation¹⁰ [10.11.5], and symmetry breaking [none]
• Dynamical networks¹¹: electrical, neural, chemical, genetic [none]

1. Russ Hobbie and I have not developed a laboratory to go along with our book, so we don’t discuss measurement, the important differences between precision and accuracy, the ideas of random versus systematic error, or error propagation.

2. Some elementary topics—such as position, velocity, and acceleration vectors—are not presented in the book, but are summarized in an Appendix (we assume they would be mastered in an introductory physics class). We analyze Newton’s second law specifically, but do not develop his three laws of motion in general.

3. We describe Young’s modulus, but we never introduce the term “stiffness.” We talk about potential energy, and especially electrical potential energy, but we don’t spend much time on mass-spring systems and never introduce the concept of elastic (or spring) potential energy.

4. The term “damping” is used only occasionally in our book, but we discuss several types of dissipative phenomena, such as viscosity, exponential decay plus a constant input, and a harmonic oscillator with friction.

5. We use conservation of momentum when we analyze Compton scattering of electrons in Chapter 15, but we never actually present conservation of momentum as a concept.

6. We don’t discuss “diffusion limited dynamics,” but we do analyze diffusion extensively in Chapter 4.

7. We analyze lenses, but not mirrors, and never analyze the reflection of light (although we spend considerable time discussing the reflection of ultrasonic waves in Chapter 13).

8. I have to admit our book is weak on microscopy: the light microscope is relegated to a homework problem, and we don’t talk at all about electron, scanning tunneling, or atomic force microscopies.

9. We discuss thermodynamic phase transitions in a homework problem, but I believe that the report refers more generally to phase transitions that occur in condensed matter physics (e.g., the Ising model), which we do not discuss.

10. We touch on pattern formation in Chapter 10, and in particular in Problems 10.39 and 10.40 that describe wave propagation in the heart using a cellular automaton. But we do not analyze pattern formation (such as Turing patterns) in detail. Symmetry breaking is not mentioned.

11. We don’t discuss neural networks, or other related topics such as emergent behavior. We can only cover so much in one book.

I may be biased, but I believe that the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology does a pretty good job of implementing the BIO2010 report suggestions into a textbook on physics for biologists. With 2010 now here, it’s important to remind aspiring biology students about the importance of physics in their undergraduate education.

A Present From Santa

Santa arrived last night and left you, dear reader, a present in your stocking: two new homework problems for the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. The problems belong to Chapter 8 on Biomagnetism (one of my favorite chapters), and specifically to Section 8.6 on Electromagnetic Induction. They both explore the idea of skin depth, but from somewhat different perspectives. Please forgive Santa for being a bit long-winded; he got carried away.

Enjoy.

Section 8.6

Problem 25.1 The concept of “skin depth” plays a role in some biomagnetic applications.
(a) Write Ampere’s law (Eq. 8.22) for the case when the displacement current is negligible.
(b) Use Ohm’s law (Eq. 6.26) to write the result from (a) in terms of the electric field.
(c) Take the curl of both sides of the equation you found in (b) (Assume the conductivity σ is homogeneous and isotropic).
(d) Use Faraday’s law (Eq. 8.20), ∇·B=0 (Eq. 8.7), and the vector identity ∇×(∇×B)=∇(∇·B)-∇²B to simplify the result from (c).
(e) Your answer to (d) should be the familiar diffusion equation (Eq. 4.24). Express the diffusion constant D in terms of electric and magnetic parameters.
(f) In Chapter 4, we found that diffusion over a distance L takes a time T equal to L²/2D. During transcranial magnetic stimulation, L=0.1 m, σ=0.1 S/m and μ_o=4π × 10⁻⁷ T m/A. How long does the magnetic field take to diffuse into the head? Is this time much longer than or much shorter than the rise time of the magnetic field for the stimulator designed by Barker et al. (1985)?
(g) Solve T= L²/2D for L, using the expression for D found in (e). Calculate L for T=0.1 ms. Is L much larger than or much smaller than the size of your head? L is closely related to the “skin depth” defined in electromagnetic theory.
(h) During magnetic resonance imaging (see Chapter 18), an 85 MHz radio-frequency magnetic field is applied to the body. Calculate L using half a period for T. How does L compare to the size of the head? The frequency of the RF field is proportional to the strength of the static magnetic field in an MRI device, and 85 MHz corresponds to 2 T. If the static field is 7 T (common in modern high-field MRI), calculate L. Is it safe to ignore skin depth during high-field MRI?

Problem 25.2 During magnetic stimulation, a changing magnetic field B induces eddy currents in the body that produce their own magnetic field B'. The goal of this problem is to compare B' and B. We can estimate B' using the following approximations. First, ignore the vector nature of all fields and do not distinguish between components. Second, ignore all negative signs. Third, replace all time derivatives with multiplication by 1/T, where T is a characteristic time. Fourth, replace all space derivatives (such as the curl) by multiplication with 1/L, where L is a characteristic length.
(a) Use Faraday’s law (Eq. 8.20) to estimate the induced electric field E from B.
(b) Use Ohm’s law (Eq. 6.26) to estimate the current density J from E.
(c) Use Ampere’s law (Eq. 8.22, but ignore displacement currents) to estimate B' from J.
(d) Combine parts (a), (b), and (c) to determine an expression for the ratio B'/B in terms of the conductivity σ, the permeability μ_o, L, and T.
(e) In magnetic stimulation, L=0.1 m, T=0.1 ms, σ=0.1 S/m and μ_o=4π × 10⁻⁷ T m/A. Calculate B'/B. Is it safe to ignore B' compared to B during magnetic stimulation?

Where's Albert?

Albert Einstein is considered one of the greatest physicists of the 20^th century, and perhaps of all time. He certainly is one of the best-known physicists, being selected by TIME Magazine as their Person of the Century in 1999. Yet, Einstein is curiously absent in the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. If you look in the index under Einstein, you find only one entry: on page 393, where Russ Hobbie and I introduce the unit of an einstein (a mole of photons) in a homework problem.

Does Einstein’s work appear anywhere else in Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology? Certainly his masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, has little or no direct impact on biology or medicine. I don’t believe we even refer indirectly to this monumental description of gravity. However, Einstein’s earlier theory, special relativity, does appear occasionally in our book. In Chapter 8 on Biomagnetism, we write “the appearance of the magnetic force is a consequence of special relativity,” a topic we explore further in Homework Problems 5 and 23. Yet, the relationship between electrodynamics and relativity is mentioned as an aside, and is not a central feature of our analysis of magnetism. We could have left out mention of relativity from Chapter 8 altogether, and the rest of the chapter would be unaffected.

Special relativity enters in a more profound way in Chapter 15, on the Interaction of Photons and Charged Particles with Matter. There, we analyze Compton Scattering, and need the relationship between photon energy E and momentum p, given by special relativity as E = pc, where c is the speed of light. Moreover, the concept of rest mass m is introduced in this chapter, and we use Einstein’s most famous equation E = mc², relating energy and mass. Rest mass appears again in the discussion of pair production, where enough photon energy must be present to produce an electron-positron pair. The equation appears one more time in Chapter 17 on Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Medicine, where mass can be converted into energy in nuclear reactions.

Besides relativity, Einstein also played a leading role in the development of quantum mechanics, especially as related to the quantization of light and the idea of photons. This idea is first presented in Chapter 9, in a section on the Possible Effects of Weak External Electric and Magnetic Fields, where we compare the photon energy (equal to Planck’s constant times the frequency of the radiation) to the thermal energy. The idea is developed in more detail in Chapter 14, in a section about The Nature of Light: Waves versus Photons. The idea of photons is central to Chapter 15, and particularly Sec. 15.2 on Photon Interactions. There, we discuss the photoelectric effect—one mechanism by which x rays interact with tissue—which is the research that won Einstein the Nobel Prize.

One final place where Einstein’s research impacts Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology is in the study of diffusion (Chapter 4). Einstein did fundamental work on diffusion in his doctoral thesis, and derived a relationship between the diffusion constant and the viscosity that we give as Eq. 4.23.

Subtle is the Lord,
by Abraham Pais.

In summary, we rarely mention Einstein by name in our book, but his influence is present throughout, and most fundamentally when we discuss the idea of a photon. For readers interested in Einstein’s life and work, I recommend the brilliant biography Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais. I have heard good things about Isaacson’s more recent biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe, although I haven’t read it. You might also enjoy the American Institute of Physics website about Einstein prepared by the AIP Center for the History of Physics. Einstein published most of the ideas I have discussed in one miraculous year, 1905. John Rigden describes these publications and their impact in his book Einstein 1905: The Standard for Greatness (I have not read this book either, but I understand it is good). Finally, the equation E = mc² has received a lot of press recently, including a NOVA special and Bodanis’s book E=mc²: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation.

Error Function

In the November 6th entry to this blog, I mentioned one special function introduced in the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology: the Bessel function. Another special function Russ Hobbie and I discuss briefly is the error function, which arises naturally when solving the one-dimensional cable equation (Chapters 6 and 7) or the diffusion equation (Chapter 4). The error function is the integral of the familiar Gaussian function, and has a sigmoidal shape, being minus one for large negative values of its argument and one for large positive values.

Handbook of Mathematical Functions
with Formulas, Graphs, and
Mathematical Tables,
by Abramowitz and Stegun.

To learn more about the error function, see the Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables by Milton Abramowitz and Irene Stegun (1972). This classic math handbook is available online at http://www.math.ucla.edu/~cbm/aands//. Also, Wikipedia has a very thorough article about the error function, including beautiful plots of the error function in the complex plane.
I’m not sure how the error function got its name. Perhaps it has something to do with experimental errors often being Gaussianly distributed. If anyone knows, please let me know.


P.S. Speaking of errors: For any students or instructors preparing to use the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology next semester, I recommend you download the errata, which can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/hobbieroth. In it, Russ Hobbie and I list all known errors in our book. The number of errors has grown, and in particular some are present in homework problems. Generally I frown on writing in my books, but in this case do yourself a favor: download the errata and mark the corrections in your copy of the text. And as always, let us know if you find additional errors. The only thing worse than finding errors in a book you wrote is having errors in a book you wrote that you are not even aware of.

P.P.S. I have written in this blog about Steven Strogatz, a mathematician and author, and about Kleber’s law, which relates metabolic rate to body mass. Here is an article by Strogatz about Kleber’s law. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Hot Tubs and Heat Stroke

In Chapter 10 (about Feedback and Control) of the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss hot tubs and heat stroke.

The body perspires in order to prevent increases in body temperature. At the same time blood flows through vessels near the surface of the skin, giving the flushed appearance of an overheated person. The cooling comes from the evaporation of the perspiration from the skin. If the perspiration cannot evaporate or is wiped off, the feedback loop is broken ad the cooling does not occur. If a subject in a hot tub overheats, the same blood flow pattern and perspiration occur, but now heat flows into the body from the hot water in the tub. The feedback has become positive instead of negative, and heat stroke and possibly death occurs.

Were we overly alarming about hot tubes? Not according to an article by Nicholas Bakalar in the November 23rd issue of the New York Times, which indicates hot tub accidents are a growing problem.

A hot tub might not seem an especially dangerous place, but over a period of 18 years, 1990–2007, more than 80,000 people were injured in hot tubs or whirlpools seriously enough to wind up in an emergency room. Almost 74 percent of the injuries occurred at home… About half the injuries were caused by slipping or falling, but heat overexposure was the problem in 10 percent of the accidents, and near-drowning in about 2.5 percent. Almost 7 percent of the injuries were serious enough to require hospitalization… The Consumer Products Safety Commission reported more than 800 deaths associated with hot tubs since 1990, nearly 90 percent of them in children under age 3.

This means that about 8000 people suffered from heat stroke accidents in hot tubs over 18 years, or over one per day. Perhaps a better understanding of biological thermodynamics and feedback loops has more than merely academic value.

To learn more, see “Death in a Hot Tub: The Physics of Heat Stroke,” by Albert Bartlett and Thomas Braun (American Journal of Physics, Volume 51, Pages 127–132, 1983).

What’s Wrong With These Equations?

The 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology is full of equations: thousands of them. Each one must fit into the text in a way to make the book easy to read. How?

N. David Mermin wrote a fascinating essay that appeared in the October 1989 issue of Physics Today titled “What’s Wrong With These Equations?” You can find it online at www.cvpr.org/doc/mermin.pdf. It begins

A major impediment to writing physics gracefully comes from the need to embed in the prose many large pieces of raw mathematics. Nothing in freshman composition courses prepares us for the literary problems raised by the use of displayed equations.

Mermin then presents three rules “that ought to govern the marriage of equations to readable prose”

• Rule 1 (Fisher’s rule): Number all displayed equations.


• Rule 2 (Good Samaritan rule): When referring to an equation identify it by a phrase as well as a number.


• Rule 3 (Math is Prose rule): End a displayed equation with a punctuation mark.

In Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I violate Fisher’s rule: some of our displayed equations are not numbered. All I can say is, there are lots of equations in our book, and revising it to obey Fisher’s rule would require more effort than we are willing to expend.

I know you are wondering how an essay about punctuating and numbering equations could possibly be interesting, but Mermin makes the subject entertaining. And if you ever find yourself writing an article that contains equations, obeying his three rules will make the article easier to read.

Boojums All the Way Through,
by N. David Mermin.

Many physicists know Mermin for his renowned textbook Solid State Physics with Neil Ashcroft. His series of “Reference Frame” essays in Physics Today are all delightful, particularly the ones with Professor Mozart. Several Reference Frame essays are reprinted in his book Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age. The title essay describes Mermin’s quest to establish the whimsical word “Boojum” as a scientific term for a phenomenon in superfluidity. If you want to learn to write physics well, read Mermin.

The Feynman Lectures

The Feynman Lectures on Physics,
by Richard Feynman.

On page 318 of the 4^th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I cite The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Reading The Feynman Lectures, written by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, is a rite of passage for future physicists. Feynman describes how he came to present the lectures in his preface:

These are the lectures in physics that I gave last year and the year before to the freshman and sophomore classes at Caltech. The lectures are, of course, not verbatim—they have been edited, sometimes extensively and sometimes less so. The lectures form only part of the complete course. The whole group of 180 students gathered in a big lecture room twice a week to hear these lectures and then they broke up into small groups of 15 to 20 students in recitation sections under the guidance of a teaching assistant. In addition, there was a laboratory section once a week.

Although written for freshman and sophomores, most physics students read The Feynman Lectures a bit later in their education. I recall reading them the summer between graduation from the University of Kansas and starting graduate school at Vanderbilt University. There is some biological and medical physics in the lectures. For instance, Chapters 35 and 36 of Volume 1 are about vision and the eye. In Chapter 3 (The Relation of Physics to Other Subjects), Feynman describes his reductionist point of view about biology:

Certainly no subject or field is making more progress on so many fronts at the present moment, than biology, and if we were to name the most powerful assumption of all, which leads one on and on in an attempt to understand life, it is that all things are made of atoms, and that everything that living things do can be understood in terms of jigglings and wigglings of atoms.

And in Volume 2 (Chapter 1), Feynman had this to say about the impact of electricity and magnetism on life:

Now we realize that the phenomena of chemical interaction and, ultimately, of life itself are to be understood in terms of electromagnetism.

He closed that chapter with a favorite quote of mine:

From a long view of the history of mankind—seen from, say, ten thousand years from now—there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

Anyone wondering what to get an aspiring physicist for a holiday gift might want to consider The Feynman Lectures. If you are looking for lighter reading, I suggest two autobiographical books by Feynman: Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, and What Do You Care What Other People Think? They’re delightful and hilarious.

Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles

Quantum Physics of Atoms,
Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles,
by Eisberg and Resnick.

One of the sources that Russ Hobbie and I cite most often in the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology is Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles, by Robert Eisberg and Robert Resnick. I used the first (1974) edition of this textbook when I was an undergraduate studying physics at the University of Kansas. Quantum Physics was the book where I was first introduced to the ideas of quantum mechanics, to the Schrodinger equation, and to nuclear physics. A second edition was published in 1985, but I can find nothing about a third edition in the last 25 years. Despite it being somewhat out-of-date, I still consider this book to be one of the best sources of information about modern physics. Below is the first paragraph of the preface:

The basic purpose of this book is to present clear and valid treatments of the properties of almost all the important quantum systems from the point of view of elementary quantum mechanics. Only as much quantum mechanics is developed as is required to accomplish the purpose. Thus we have chosen to emphasize the applications of the theory more than the theory itself. In so doing we hope that the book will be well adapted to the attitudes of contemporary students in a terminal course on the phenomena of quantum physics. As students obtain an insight into the tremendous explanatory power of quantum mechanics, they should be motivated to learn more about the theory. Hence, we hope that the book will be equally well adapted to a course that is to be followed by a more advanced course in formal quantum mechanics.

I have never taught the modern physics class here at Oakland University, but if I did I would certainly consider using Eisberg and Resnick’s book. When I have taught the undergraduate quantum mechanics class (taken after modern physics) I used another wonderful book, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David Griffiths. There are several good quantum mechanics books at the graduate level, but I—a biomedical physicist—have never been asked to teach graduate quantum mechanics. (Are they telling me something?)

Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology doesn’t make much use of quantum ideas, except at a very qualitative level. Schrodinger’s equation is only mentioned once (on page 49), and is never written out. The idea of discrete quantum energy levels is introduced in Chapter 3 when we discuss statistical mechanics, and again in Chapter 14 when explaining atomic spectra. However, concepts related to quantization of light are important. For instance, thermal (blackbody) radiation is discussed in Section 14.7 (and is covered elegantly in the first chapter of Eisberg and Resnick) and Compton scattering is analyzed in Sec. 15.4. Quantum Physics should provide all the background you will need to understand these and other modern physics topics.