One recurring theme in this blog is how scientists make the transition from working in the physical sciences to studying the biological sciences. Indeed, this theme is intimately related to Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. Recently, I decided to consider a case study of how a prominent scientist straddled…

This week I read The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning, by Peter Hotez. Every American should read this book. In his introductory chapter, Hotez writes This is a dark and tragic story of how a significant segment of the population of the United States suddenly, defiantly, and without…

In Chapter 16 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the antiscatter grid used in radiography. Since the radiograph assumes that photons either travel in a straight line from the point source in the x-ray tube to the detector or are absorbed, Compton-scattered photons that…

When my wife and I were in Paris several years ago we visited the Musée de l’Orangerie, where Claude Monet’s beautiful water lily murals are displayed. Monet (1840–1926) is the famous impressionist painter who, during the last decades of his life, painted lilies floating on the surface of the pond…

Last week I introduced the Helmholtz coil and the Maxwell coil. The Maxwell coil is useful for creating the magnetic field gradient needed for magnetic resonance imaging. At the end of the post, I wrote The Maxwell coil is great for producing the magnetic field gradient needed for slice selection…

To do magnetic resonance imaging, you need a static magnetic field that is uniform and a switchable magnetic field that has a uniform gradient. How do you produce such fields? In this post, I explain one of the simplest ways: using a Helmholtz coil and a Maxwell coil. Both of…

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. Henry Adams How does someone end up being coauthor on a textbook like Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology? It takes a lot of friends, teachers, and role models who help you along the way. I had many…

Did you watch Oppenheimer in the theater this summer? I did. The movie told how J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb during World War II. But the movie skipped Oppenheimer’s research in biological physics related to photosynthesis. Russ Hobbie and I only make…

A slightly edited excerpt from Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? by Brad Roth In 1989, Paul Brodeur — an American science writer and longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine — published the best-seller Currents of Death. Brodeur made the case that electromagnetic fields associated with power lines cause…