Week of Topics
8 Jan. Introduction to class; The scale of things - units and dimensions
15 Jan. Introduction to probability
22 Jan. More on probability; Plinkos and the binomial distribution
29 Jan. Random walks in one, two and three dimensions
5 Feb. Random walks continued; Distribution of end-to-end distances; The Gaussian distribution
12 Feb. Diffusion; Fick's laws
19 Feb. More on diffusion: Molecular motions in gasses and liquids
26 Feb. Biological implications of diffusion: Water loss from plants and bacterial chemotaxis
4 March Spring Break!
11 March Thermodynamics: Energy, heat, work and entropy
18 March Thermodynamics continued: Free energy and chemical thermodynamics
25 March Water and hydrophobicity
1 April Lipids and biological membranes
8 April Protein folding: Energetics, mechanisms and when things go wrong
15 April Molecular motors
22 April Molecular motors continued
Final Exam: Thursday, 25 April 8:00 to 10:00 AM