Biological Transport Phenomena

4 credits · Undergraduate

The transport of mass, momentum, and energy are critical to the function of living systems and the design of medical devices. Biological transport phenomena are present at a wide range of length scales: molecular, cellular, organ (whole and by functional unit), and organism. This course develops and applies scaling laws and the methods of continuum mechanics to biological transport phenomena over a range of length and time scales. The course is intended for undergraduate students who have taken a course in differential equations and an introductory course in physics. Students should be familiar with basic biology; an understanding of physiology is useful, but not assumed.