Physics of Life (2022) / Chapter Skim
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8 Education
8 Education
Pages 244-270
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From page 244... ...
Developing effective educational strategies is vital for communicating the enticing intellectual opportunities of the field and for attracting talented aspiring scientists from the broadest possible cross-section of our society. The importance of this challenge is reflected in the fact that the majority of input the committee received from the community -- voiced at the two town halls and in writing through the online platform -- was about education.
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From page 245... ...
This chapter explores how the emergence of biological physics fits into the culture of physics education, how biological physics can be integrated into the physics curriculum, and how this field can be leveraged to enhance the education of scientists more generally. As we explore the educational challenges and opportunities created by the emergence of biological physics, it will be clear that some of these are internal to physics departments, while others involve collaboration between physics faculty and colleagues in other departments.
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From page 246... ...
Since the 1960s, many college physics programs have taken a narrower and more focused view of the subject, even as physics itself has become a much broader enterprise. A good il lustration of this is provided by the table of contents of Fundamentals of Physics,1 a textbook widely used for introductory physics courses.
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From page 247... ...
The neglect of the living world, and its exploration by the physics community, continues into more advanced physics courses. Discussions of electric circuits and current flow seldom touch on the electrical dynamics of neurons; advanced mechanics courses seldom hint at the challenges of walking; optics courses rarely explain the principles of optical trapping or super-resolution microscopy; and quantum mechanics courses leave as mysteries the broad optical absorption bands of biological molecules, so different from atoms in gas phase but so central to the ability of life on Earth to capture the energy of the sun and to the rich colors that we experience every day.
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From page 248... ...
Statistical physics courses, certainly at the undergraduate level, end before students can see Brownian motion as the primordial example of a stochastic process or realize that Monte Carlo simulation provides a path for exploring probabilistic models of sys tems well beyond thermal equilibrium. While physics teaching is properly focused on core subjects, all students would be well served by seeing that these subjects touch a wider variety of problems.
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From page 249... ...
The emergence of biological physics is just one reason to think more deeply about the core physics curriculum. Beyond the core curriculum, physics departments typically offer courses in the subfields of physics, both at the undergraduate and the graduate level.
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From page 250... ...
At the graduate level, biological physics education in physics programs -- what is counted in Figure 8.1 -- coexists with a wide range of programs in the biological FIGURE 8.1 Monitoring the growth of biological physics as a subfield of physics in the 21st century. Doctoral degrees awarded in biological physics, compared with other subfields of physics.
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From page 251... ...
Finding: Biological physics remains poorly represented in the core undergrad uate physics curriculum, and few students have opportunities for specialized courses that convey the full breadth and depth of the field. 350 biological physics biophysics (bio)
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From page 252... ...
There are numerous opportunities to strengthen the effort, both within physics departments and at areas of intersection with other fields. This discussion of education is in the context of the first conclusion, from Part I of this report: Conclusion: Biological physics, or the physics of living systems, now has emerged fully as a field of physics, alongside more traditional fields of astro physics and cosmology; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; condensed matter physics; nuclear physics; particle physics; and plasma physics.
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From page 253... ...
These observations on the scale and breadth of physics education emphasize that integration of the physics of living systems into undergraduate physics education cannot be done solely by the relatively small number of faculty who identify as part of the biological physics research community. Educational challenges do not have one-size-fits-all solutions, not least because the environment for teaching varies enormously across institutions.
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From page 254... ...
Conversely, an early but narrow focus on biological physics risks compromising students' founda tional knowledge of physics, and they will end up less well prepared to embrace and address the complexity of the living world. The goal is to give students paths for exploring the field in ways that reinforce, rather than sacrifice, the depth and breadth of a general physics education.
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From page 255... ...
There have been several good starts in this direction, but the committee concludes that much more is needed. As noted above, two topics in the core physics curriculum stand out for their great relevance to biological physics -- statistical physics and optics.
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From page 256... ...
Specialized Coursework in Biological Physics Beyond exposing students to biological physics in the core of their physics education, creating opportunities for interested students to delve more deeply raises a variety of additional considerations: What mathematics background and physics experience are needed before taking a specialized course on biological physics? What is the appropriate balance between biological physics coursework and general physics coursework for students who choose to specialize in this field?
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From page 257... ...
General Recommendation: Physics faculty should organize biological phys ics coursework around general principles, and ensure that students specializ ing in biological physics receive a broad and deep general physics education. An important part of the physicist's approach to nature, which also is central to the teaching of biological physics, is that our understanding is expressed in math ematical terms and tested in quantitative experiments.
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From page 258... ...
Physics departments might require their undergraduates to take particular advanced courses in applicable mathematics, they might offer their own courses on the mathematical methods of physics, or they might assume that more advanced methods are taught as part of physics courses; many institutions offer a mix of these approaches. For students interested in deeper exploration of biological physics, what is missing from the conventional collection of mathematical methods is not so much particular topics as an understanding that these methods fit into larger and more generally applicable structures.
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From page 259... ...
Many of the concepts and methods in this field have their roots in statistical mechanics, with the Boltzmann distribution as the primordial example of a proba bilistic model. All physics students would benefit from knowing that these connec tions exist, and the physics community as a whole would benefit from reclaiming some of this larger field, now belonging primarily to computer science and applied mathematics, where physicists have made many contributions.
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From page 260... ...
Conclusion: Biological physics, and physics more generally, face a challenge in embracing the excitement that surrounds big data, while maintaining the unique physics culture of interaction between experiment and theory. Coda Taken together, the recommendations above point toward a more general aspect of physics culture.
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From page 261... ...
The previous section emphasized the opportunities for integrating biological physics into introductory courses for physics students, and the same arguments apply even more strongly to physics courses for students in the life sciences. Examples from biological physics illustrate many core principles of physics more generally, and the notion that these principles are relevant to the phenomena of life is itself an important fact, one that can change a young student's view of the intellectual landscape.
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From page 262... ...
Almost all research universities now have visible programs in areas that can be described as "quantitative biology," although exactly what this means is different at different institutions, and the extent to which these programs are accessible to undergrad uates also varies. Interestingly, many institutions have programs in biophysics 4 National Research Council, 2003, BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
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From page 263... ...
In particular, biophysics pro grams have been a major source of students working on X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and cryogenic electron microscopy approaches to the structure of biological molecules, well before these approaches merged into structural biology. Even with the growth of quantitative biology programs, the basic requirements for traditional biology undergraduates remain light in mathematics and the physi cal sciences, and this has consequences for how more advanced biology students engage with central topics in the field.
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From page 264... ...
Conclusion: The biological physics community has a central role to play in initiatives for multidisciplinary education in quantitative biology, bioengineer ing, and related areas. General Recommendation: University and college administrators should al locate resources to physics departments as part of their growing educational and research initiatives in quantitative biology and biological engineering, acknowledging the central role of biological physics in these fields.
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From page 265... ...
Biological physics research groups have a special role to play in the ecosystem of undergraduate research experiences. Many experimental groups in the field are small and focus on "table top" experiments, providing a more intimate commu nity for young students.
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From page 266... ...
These are challenging questions, and the path to more satisfying answers will necessitate resources beyond those that are currently allocated. Institutions vary widely in the resources that they bring in support of introduc tory undergraduate physics courses.
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From page 267... ...
Postdoctoral periods also have become longer, so that what was once a transitional period is becoming a substantial phase of career and life; a corollary is that postdoctoral fellows are becoming a larger part of the scientific workforce. These trends are especially strong in the biomedical sciences, where they have been identified by prominent com mentators as among the "systemic flaws" in the research enterprise.6 The situation in the physics community is different, but might not be better.
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From page 268... ...
To maintain coherence as postdoctoral fellows move to a wide variety of research environments requires support for their attendance at events that bring them into contact with the broad biological physics community. In this respect, an important role is played by institutions such as the Aspen Center for Physics and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, which have hosted many programs on topics in biological physics alongside those in better established subfields of physics.
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From page 269... ...
While postdoctoral fellows in some areas of physics largely confine their searches for academic jobs to physics departments, biological physicists often face a bewildering array of academic job options. There are opportunities in physics departments, but these are not pro portional to the size of the field.
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From page 270... ...
These are symptoms of the large gap that has developed between the practice of science and the education of undergraduates. This chapter has examined these issues, leading to a series of interlocking findings, conclusions, and recommendations about: • the integration of biological physics into the core physics curriculum; • the need for modernization of the physics curriculum; • courses on biological physics for advanced physics students; • the special role of biological physics in building a more quantitative biology; and • integration of education and research, and support for this integration.
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