Welcome to the homepage for Biophysics and BioImaging, a course offered every Fall at Centenary College of Louisiana

This biophysics course is designed to introduce students to classical and modern topics in biophysics, and to provide them with laboratory experiences that illustrate biophysical principles discussed in class. A unique aspect of this class is the attempt to package classical and new topics in biophysics, at a level that is accessible to all students who have taken only the standard introductory, calculus-based physics classes. The content and design of this class is credited largely to the very bright students who over the years helped me shape this course into what it is today.

From left to right. Top row: Magy Shehata (Biochemistry), Brett Martin (Chemistry and Biophysics), Jeremy (Physics), Jordan (Biology), Roy (Physics), Jessica Garza (Biophysics), Nicole Turner (Biophysics), and Julia Cornelius (Biophysics).

LECTURE NOTES

The links below take you to the various topics covered in this class, which are a synthesis of my notes and student feedback accumulated since I began teaching this class in the Fall of 1997. These notes are now written in textbook format, thanks to one of my former students, Kathryn Thompson, now a graduate student at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. In addition to her skillful writing, she also helped re-organize the material and augmented some of the topics with her own examples. Many of the illustrations were made by an artistically talented biophysics student, Meredith Stewart, who is now a student of traditional chinese medicine.

If you are a visitor from outside our campus and find these notes of interest, please feel free to use them for non-commercial purposes. We would also appreciate receiving any feedback or suggestions that might help us improve the material.

-- Juan Rodriguez

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

1) The physics of walking

2) Blood flow: fluid flow through a pipe

3) Hearing range, decibels and loudness, resonance of the ear canal, and spectrum of speech

4) Heat dissipation from the body: radiant heat, evaporative cooling, and heat conduction

5) Visual acuity

6) Absorption of light by bio-molecules

7) Emission properties of bio-molecules

8) Energy transfer in photosynthesis

9) Protein folding

10) Fluorescence microscopy

11) Computed tomography

12) Ultrasound imaging

13) Magnetic Resonance Imaging