Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences

“It is indeed a refreshing approach to teaching Gen PHYS for pre-med and related majors…. [offering] biology-motivated examples, concise main points, Mathematica-driven interactive work, and nice, structured problems. The appropriate level of calculus is used, without overemphasizing it, but also avoiding ‘algebra only’ approach that often hampers some of the discussion and problem solving.” – professor of physics, Colgate University

Springer Link, 2023

Co-authored by Professor Mochrie and Claudia De Grandi, this classroom-tested textbook is an innovative, comprehensive, and forward-looking introductory undergraduate physics course. While it clearly explains physical principles and equips the student with a full range of quantitative tools and methods, the material is firmly grounded in biological relevance and is brought to life with plenty of biological examples throughout. It is currently being used as the textbook for Yale’s Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences sequence, PHYS 170/171.

It is designed to be a self-contained text for a two-semester sequence of introductory physics for biology and premedical students, covering kinematics and Newton’s laws, energy, probability, diffusion, rates of change, statistical mechanics, fluids, vibrations, waves, electromagnetism, and optics.

Each chapter begins with learning goals, and concludes with a summary of core competencies, allowing for seamless incorporation into the classroom. In addition, each chapter is replete with a wide selection of creative and often surprising examples, activities, computational tasks, and exercises, many of which are inspired by current research topics, making cutting-edge biological physics accessible to the student.

Simon Mochrie is Professor of Physics and Applied Physics in FAS.

His co-author, Claudia De Grandi, initiated this project with Professor Mochrie when she was a post-doctoral scholar at Yale.