E-Book Overview
Biological Physics focuses on new results in molecular motors, self-assembly, and single-molecule manipulation that have revolutionized the field in recent years, and integrates these topics with classical results. The text also provides foundational material for the emerging field of nanotechnology.
Biological Physics is built around a self-contained core geared toward undergraduate students who have had one year of calculus-based physics. Additional "Track-2" sections contain more advanced material for senior physics majors and graduate students.
Do you teach, or are you considering a course in Biological Physics?
If so, click here to read Phil Nelson's "To The Instructor":
http://www.bfwpub.com/pdfs/nelson/NelsonToTheInstructor.pdf
E-Book Content
Biological Physics: Energy, Information, Life Philip Nelson, www.physics.upenn.edu/∼pcn/ With the assistance of Marko Radosavljevi´c c 2000, 2001, 2002 Philip C. Nelson Draft December 8, 2002
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Not chaos-like together crush’d and bruis’d, But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree. – Alexander Pope, 1713
Frontispiece: DNA from a bacterium that has been lysed (burst), for example by osmotic shock (12200× magnification). The bacterial genome that once occupied a small region in the center of the figure now extends in a series of loops from the core structure (arrow). From (Wolfe, 1985).
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About this manuscript: Here is the first half of the text. (The second half will come in about a month.) There is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that your text for this course is free, apart from duplication costs. The bad news is that you have to help me write it. No, wait! That’s good news: Here’s your chance to tell an author where all the confusing bits are, what things I’ve wrongly assume