Interdisciplinary Physics

The goal of this project, part of the NEXUS project funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is to develop new physics course for biology majors and pre-healthcare students that can serve as a national model. Two key features of the project are:

• It will focus on building scientific competencies as outlined in the SFFP report and,
• It is to have a high level of coordination among the scientific disciplines of biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

Our mandate is to think carefully about both competencies and interdisciplinarity with the hope of going further than what has been accomplished in previous attempts to create a physics course that meets the needs of biology students.  The objectives, content, and assessment of the new course are detailed on the course development wiki.

A variety of new instructional materials has been created to support the new course:

First Semester Materials
Physics 131: Fundamentals of Physics for Biologists I

• Course readings
• Homework and exam problems
• In-class clicker questions

Second Semester Materials
Physics 132: Fundamentals of Physics for Biologists II

• Course readings
• Homework and exam problems
• In-class clicker questions