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In an Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) course that leverages authentic biological examples, student ideas about entropy as disorder or chaos come into contact with their ideas about the spontaneous formation of organized biological structure. It is possible to reconcile the natural tendency to disorder with the organized clustering of macromolecules, but doing so in a way that will be meaningful to students requires that we take seriously the ideas about entropy and spontaneity that students bring to IPLS courses from their prior experiences in biology and chemistry. We draw on case study interviews to argue that an approach that emphasizes the interplay of energy and entropy in determining spontaneity (one that involves a central role for free energy) is one that draws on students resources from biology and chemistry in particularly effective ways. We see the positioning of entropic arguments alongside energetic arguments in the determination of spontaneity as an important step toward making our life science students biology, chemistry, and physics experiences more coherent.
Energy is a complex idea that cuts across scientific disciplines. For life science students, an approach to energy that incorporates chemical bonds and chemical reactions is better equipped to meet the needs of life sciences students than a tradition
A goal of Introductory Physics for Life Sciences (IPLS) curricula is to prepare students to effectively use physical models and quantitative reasoning in biological and medical settings. To assess whether this goal is being met, we conducted a longit
An important goal of introductory physics for the life sciences (IPLS) is for those students to be prepared to use physics to model and analyze biological situations in their future studies and careers. Here we report our findings on life science stu
As part of a larger research project into massively open online courses (MOOCs), we have investigated student background, as well as student participation in a physics MOOC with a laboratory component. Students completed a demographic survey and the
Proficiency with calculating, reporting, and understanding measurement uncertainty is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is a research-based assessment tool that