BioE 104 - Biological Mass Transport Phenomena (4 Units)
Course Overview
Summary
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.
Professors
Prerequisites
What's next?
Choosing the course
What concentration is this course relevant to?
Topics covered
- Diffusion of mass
- Random Walk
- Fick's Law
- Stokes-Einstein
- Steady-state 1D diffusion in Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical coordinates
- Quasi-Steady-State diffusion
- Diffusion and conservation of momentum
- Navior-Stokes equation
- Dimensional Analysis
- Stokes' flow
- Bernoulli Principle
- Diffusion and Convection
- Short contact time solution
- Mass Transfer coefficients
- Diffusion and Reaction
- Receptor and ligand binding
When should I take the course?
The course is intended for undergraduate students (sophomore/junior recommended) 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.
Workload and Tips
What is the workload and exam diffculty?
About 4 hours per week on homework, but office hours are very accessible and help. You can feel a progression in the hw based on lecture material.
Labs are low commitment, follow straightforward outline and submit as part of homework assignment.
There is one midterm and one final; both exams are hard but fair.
There will be a final project in the end, where you choose your own project idea and work in a group of four to design your own fluid flow model.