This article is a slightly edited excerpt from the book Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? by Brad Roth. A disturbing aspect of the debate over if 5G cell phone radiation is dangerous is the tendency of many people to mistrust science. A widely-shared conspiracy theory about a link between…

This blog is about physics applied to medicine and biology, but if we don’t solve the climate crisis there’s no use developing fancier ways to do medical imaging or radiation therapy; we’ll all be dead. So today I’m going to tell you about a book I just read, titled Drawdown…

“Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.” Those three sentences…

A homework problem in Chapter 14 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology states Problem 28. Integrate Eq. 14.33 over all wavelengths to obtain the Stefan-Boltzmann law, Eq. 14.34. You will need the integral Equation 14.33 is Planck’s blackbody radiation law and Eq. 14.34 …

When I was at the National Institutes of Health in the early 1990s, I worked on transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain. In Chapter 8 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I describe this technique. 8.7 Magnetic Stimulation Since a changing magnetic field generates an induced…

In Table 13.1 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I list the approximate intensity levels of various sounds, in decibels. …

I often become interested in the writing of a particular author and read several of that author’s books consecutively. Recently, I’ve become obsessed with Richard Rhodes. Last week in this blog, I discussed his 2018 book Energy: A Human History. Today I analyze his more recent (2021) biography Scientist: E…

In Chapter 2 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I have an end-of-chapter homework problem about consuming a finite resource. Section 2.10 Problem 37. The consumption of a finite resource is often modeled using thelogistic equation. Let y(t) be the cumulative amount of a resource consumed…

Suppose you’ve read Chapter 18 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology covering magnetic resonance imaging and you want to learn more. What do you read next? I suggest the new textbook by Yang Xia, Essential Concepts in MRI: Physics, Instrumentation, Spectroscopy, and Imaging. Xia writes in the Preface In…