Lecture Notes/Text Book

These fall somewhere between an outline of the material covered in class and a real text book, and are very much a work in progress. These notes are intended to provide a background and guide to the material covered in class, and, in some cases, goes into greater depth than we are able to in class. For quizzes and exams, you will only be responsible for what is actually covered in class, but reading the additional material may still be helpful in gaining a deeper understanding.

The notes are organized into chapters representing the major topics to be covered during the semester. These chapters will likely be updated as the semester progresses. Major updates will be announced on the Updates page of this web site.

Lecture Slides and Videos

The slides used in each lecture will be posted here shortly after the class session. Links to the slides will aslo be posted on Canvas.
Lecture 1, 8 January
Lecture 2, 10 January
Lecture 3, 12 January
Lecture 4, 17 January
Lecture 5, 19 January
Lecture 6, 22 January
Lecture 7, 24 January
Lecture 8, 26 January
Lecture 9, 29 January
Lecture 10, 31 January
Lecture 11, 2 February
Lecture 12, 5 February
Lecture 13, 7 February
  • Variations on the 2-d Random Walk and Continuous Probability Distribution Functions
    Download slides (pdf)
Lecture 14, 9 February
Lecture 15, 12 February
Lecture 16, 14 February
Lecture 17, 16 February
  • Diffusion from a Sharp Boundary and Kinetic Energy
    Download slides (pdf)
  • Simulation of Diffusion. The animated simulation of diffusion from a sharp boundary that I showed in class was created in Mathematica, a computer program with a wide range of powerful tools for mathematics. Although Mathematica is quite expensive, the file for the simulation can be opened and used with a free player program avalialble from the makers of Mathematica, Wolfram Research.
    The simulation file can be downloaded here.
    The player program can be downloaded from: http://www.wolfram.com/player/
Lecture 18, 21 February
Lecture 19, 23 February
Lecture 20, 26 February
Lecture 21, 28 February
Lecture 22, 1 March
Lecture 23, 11 March
Lecture 24, 13 March
Lecture 25, 18 March
Lecture 26, 20 March
Lecture 27, 22 March
Lecture 28, 25 March
Lecture 29, 27 March
Lecture 30, 29 March
Lecture 31, 1 April 2024
Lecture 32, 3 April 2024
Lecture 33, 5 April 2024
Lecture 34, 8 April 2024
Lecture 35, 10 April 2024
  • Protein Structure Prediction, Optical Tweezers and Introduction to Molecular Motors
    Download slides (pdf)
Lecture 36, 12 April 2024
Lecture 37, 15 April 2024
Lecture 38, 17 April 2024
Lecture 39, 19 April 2024