University Physics for Life Sciences

An introductory physics textbook for life science students that focuses on biological examples at the cellular and molecular level. What physical phenomena will life science students encounter in their advanced coursework? Built from the ground up to answer this question, University Physics for Life Sciences offers an introductory physics textbook that focuses on biological examples at the cellular and molecular level. Writing specifically for life science undergraduates, Lisa Lapidus incorporates two foundational themes excluded from standard texts: diffusion, a collection of elastic collisions between molecules, and electric dipoles, the basis for almost all biological molecular interactions. The book’s first half covers mechanics—kinematics, conservation of energy and momentum, and Newton’s laws, followed by enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs free energy. The second half covers electricity and magnetism, including Coulomb’s law, electric fields and potential, current, and magnetic fields and forces, waves, optics and quantum mechanics. Uses computation to explain complex biological phenomena Covers diffusion, statistical mechanics and free energy as well as electric dipoles and their interactions with light Accessibly introduces python programming Is based on over a decade of classroom use Suits biology, pre-med, and pre-health undergraduates with some knowledge of calculus