Blog to IPMB Mapping

One reason I write this blog is to help instructors who are teaching from Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. The blog, however, is over ten years old, and there are more than 500 posts. Teachers may not be able to find what they need.

Help is here! I have prepared a mapping of the sections in IPMB to the weekly blog posts (see an excerpt below). You can find it here, or through the book website, or download the pdf (but the links might not work). Now an instructor teaching, say, Section 1.1 (Distances and Sizes) can find eight related posts. I will keep the file up-to-date as new posts appear.

Some posts, including many of my favorites, are not associated with a particular section; I did not include those. A few posts fit with two or three sections, and appear several times. The majority relate to a single section.

What do I write about most? Four sections in IPMB have ten or more related posts.

• Section 9.10, Possible Effects of Weak External Electric and Magnetic Fields, 11 posts. Many of these posts debunk myths about the dangers of weak low-frequency fields.
• Section 17.7, Radiopharmaceuticals and Tracers, 11 posts. Several posts discuss potential shortages of technetium.
• Section 16.2, The Risk of Radiation, 19 posts. These posts are about radiation accidents, the “risk” of very low doses of radiation, and the linear-no-threshold model.
• Section 7.10, Electrical Stimulation, 20 posts. This section reflects my research interests, with multiple posts describing pacemakers, defibrillators, and neural stimulation.

Which chapters have the most posts? In first place are Chapters 8 (Biomagnetism) and 16 (Medical Uses of X-Rays), each with 39. Tied for last are Chapters 3 (Systems of Many Particles) and 5 (Transport Through Neutral Membranes), each with only 11. I guess I don’t like to post about thermodynamics.

I hope this mapping from IPMB to the blog helps instructors use the textbook. Enjoy!