Incorporating Computation into a Physics Course for Life Science Students

Author / Creator

AAPT SM20 (2020)

Conferences

AAPT SM20 PAR-G.05 Introductory Physics For Life Sciences (IPLS) (2020)

Available as

Online

Summary

Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) courses are gaining momentum in the physics education community, with the creation of multiple curricula for a variety of implementation strategies...

Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) courses are gaining momentum in the physics education community, with the creation of multiple curricula for a variety of implementation strategies. At Michigan State University, we have designed an integrated lab-lecture (studio style) introductory physics course that meets the needs of life science students. Our design of this course focuses on incorporating computational simulations that model complex biological phenomenon and complement empirical lab investigations. We will present on updates to a unit on diffusion in which we incorporated a series of computational tasks designed to build up students' understanding of collisions and random motion. In this presentation we will describe changes that we have made to the unit and how those changes supported student understanding and engagement.

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