Big News! This week Springer published my new book: Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? How Electricity and Magnetism Affect Our… — Big News! This week Springer published my new book: Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? How Electricity and Magnetism Affect Our Health. This book is different from Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology: it’s short (122 pages), uses no math, and is aimed at a general audience. Readers of this…

In Chapter 14 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the absorption of light by water. Our Figure… — In Chapter 14 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the absorption of light by water. Our Figure 14.14 shows that the absorption coefficient of water increases with the wavelength of light over the range from 600 to 750…

My friend Raghuveer (Raghu) Parthasarathy (author of the blog The Eighteenth Elephant) recently published a biological physics book titled… — My friend Raghuveer (Raghu) Parthasarathy (author of the blog The Eighteenth Elephant) recently published a biological physics book titled So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World. Here is an excerpt from his introduction. I’ve already hinted at the view of nature… this book expands upon…

Only great scientists have units named after them: the newton, the joule, the watt. An important unit in medical physics is the gray… — Only great scientists have units named after them: the newton, the joule, the watt. An important unit in medical physics is the gray. Chapter 15 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology states The absorbed dose is the expectation value of the energy imparted per unit mass:

This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the full version of its Sixth Assessment Report. A news article… — This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the full version of its Sixth Assessment Report. A news article posted by the Union of Concerned Scientists begins with the headline New IPCC Report Finds Sharp Cuts in Fossil Fuels and Emissions Urgently Needed, Policymakers’ Failures Putting Climate Goals…

Homework Problem 27 in Chapter 4 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology examines diffusion in the presence of a buffer. The… — Homework Problem 27 in Chapter 4 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology examines diffusion in the presence of a buffer. The problem shows that the buffer slows diffusion and introduces the idea of an effective diffusion constant. I like this problem but I admit it’s rather long-winded. Recently, when…

On Wednesday I attended a National Academies webinar about the release of its Decadal Survey of Biological Physics/Physics of Living… — On Wednesday I attended a National Academies webinar about the release of its Decadal Survey of Biological Physics/Physics of Living Systems. You can download a free pdf copy of this report from the website nap.edu/physicsoflife. I urge all readers of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology— and, indeed, anyone interested…

In Chapter 7 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the bidomain model. — In Chapter 7 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the bidomain model. Myocardial cells are typically about 10 μm in diameter and 100 μm long. They have the added complication that they are connected to one another by gap junctions… This allows currents to…

In Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I often refer to Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing, by… — In Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I often refer to Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing, by William Press, Saul Teukolsky, William Vetterling, and Brian Flannery. We usually cite the second edition of the book with programs written in C (1995), but the copy on…