Welcome to Biomechanics. In the next few weeks I hope to introduce you to a rapidly growing field that has the advantage of interfacing with just about all branches of the biological sciences. Approximately the first half of the course will be lecture by me followed by class discussion of the fundamentals of the field. In the second half of the course the emphasis will shift to research projects. The following is a tentative schedule for the first half of the seminar.
Jan. 22: Properties of fluids, continuity, Bernoulli, Reynolds number, and drag (Vogel chapters 2,3,4,5)
Jan. 29: The biological consequences of drag and boundary layers (Vogel chapters 6,7,8,9)
Feb. 5: Suspension feeding, trade-offs, and lift. (Vogel chapters 11,15)
Feb. 12: Solids: stress, strain, cracks, and biological materials (Gordon chapters 2,3,4,5,6)
Feb. 19: Composite materials, structures, beams and bags. (Gordon chapters 8,11,12)
Week of Feb. 26: Research Proposals I
Week of Mar. 4: Research Proposals II
The direction of the course from this point will depend on the projects you select to do. I do expect that we will take a trip to the gait lab at the Foot and Ankle Institute in Philadelphia to see how a different kind of biomechanics is practiced.
Evaluation
Your grade in this course will come from several sources.
(1) There will be a set of laboratory exercises and/or problem sets for you to complete and hand in each week. These are designed to give you some firsthand experience with the equipment, phenomena, and formulae that we have been talking about in class and that you may want to employ in your project. I expect you to do this work at a time that you schedule yourself. It is fine if you want to do the lab work in small groups. It is also good if you discuss the problems with each other, but each of you must hand in to me an answer set that indicates that you have put some individual intellectual effort into the product. For the first few weeks before we begin work on the research projects, 3 or 4 students will lead a contained discussion about the problems for that week. The idea is that by seeing how others approach the work almost everyone gains new insight. I will ask you to sign up for the different slots at our first meeting.
(2) The second source of points is from critiques you will write each week on original research papers that will be assigned. The basic format is at the end of this handout. You should complete these prior to class so that when we discuss a paper you all will have read it and formed some opinions about it. While it is important to recognize the short comings of a piece of research, these critiques (and our discussions) should go beyond just finding the errors - we should be thinking about how this information changes the way we think about the topic and what the next set of questions or experiments would be.
(3) Lastly, a major portion of your grade will come from your research project. My expectation is that people will work in teams on projects. The size and composition of those teams will be dictated by individual interests and the scope of topics. In the two weeks following the lecture sequence we will hear research proposals where each individual will propose an area that would be interesting and possible to work on for themselves or as a group project. This should be as a 10 to 15 minute presentation where you describe what you want to do, how it could be done, why it is interesting, and what sort of results you expect. This exercise has two purposes, it will be a vehicle for you to pick a topic and get going on it, and it will allow you to get feed back from others about your initial ideas. I expect the audience to actively participate in discussing the ideas and techniques of each proposal. At the conclusion of these proposals we will decide what projects will be done and who will work on which projects. After spring break the rest of our meetings will be devoted to discussions of the work that is going on. Culmination of the process will include presentation of results to the class and individually written papers in standard format.
Texts
There are two texts for this course that are "required" and one that is suggested. The "required" books are two of the most enjoyable, useful books that I know. Life in Moving Fluids covers fluid issues and is written by Dr. Steven Vogel of Duke University. Structures or Why Things Don't Fall Down covers solid mechanics and is written by Professor J.E. Gordon of the University of Reading. I have noted the chapters that will be most directly covered on the schedule. Both books have very useful appendices. The suggested text is one that you may have from your general biology days, it is A Short Guide to Writing about Biology by Dr. Jan Pechenik.
Format for Critiques
For each paper that your are assigned in this class, I expect you to turn in a one page (approximately) critique that specifically addresses the following questions:
1. What is the point of this paper (2 or 3 sentence summary).
2. Do the data presented support the author(s)'s statements? Why or why not?
3. What was particularly damning or convincing in the work?
4. What is a logical extension of the work (e.g. new questions, experiments, etc.)?