Week of Topics
6 Jan. Introduction to class; The scale of things - units and dimensions
13 Jan. Introduction to probability
20 Jan. More on probability; Plinkos and the binomial distribution
27 Jan. Random walks in one, two and three dimensions
3 Feb. Random walks continued; Distribution of end-to-end distances; The Gaussian distribution
10 Feb. Diffusion; Fick's laws
17 Feb. More on diffusion: Molecular motions in gasses and liquids
24 Feb. Biological implications of diffusion: Water loss from plants and bacterial chemotaxis
3 March Thermodynamics: Energy, heat, work and entropy
10 March Spring Break!
17 March Thermodynamics continued: Free energy and chemical thermodynamics
24 March Water and hydrophobicity
31 March Lipids and biological membranes
7 April Protein folding: Energetics, mechanisms and when things go wrong
14 April Molecular motors
21 April Molecular motors continued
Final Exam: Friday, 25 April 8:00 to 10:00 AM