Introduction to Biological Physics for the Health and Life Sciences [Paperback]

Books like this are pretty rare. I never had the benefit of any books like this when I was learning biophysics. Howard Berg has an excellent book that focuses on the Random Walk (diffusion) but covers how flight works, fluid flow in blood vessels, and a bunch of other fascinating problems in biology.

I had very high hopes for this book. It addresses a hole in the market that has existed for a long time. I was a little surprised that it comes from a team in New Zealand, which is obvious from the appearance of cricket balls in some of the problems and the exclusive use of metric units.

This book starts, as all the best physics books do, almost from first principles. It makes this book an ideal text for advanced high school courses, undergrad courses, and some grad school courses. There are some worked problems in the text and many problems at the end of each chapter but the solutions are not included in this book. The pressure chapters are followed with one on fluid flow, diffusion, and osmosis. The chapter on diffusion and osmosis is only four pages. They are an excellent summary of those two fundamental mechanisms of molecular transport, but I've seen better in a regular biology book. The electricity chapters do have a page on action potentials in cells, but I expected more from a dedicated biological physics book.

My biggest disappointment came in the cursory discussion of diffraction, which did not include anything on x-ray crystallography. To me a biophysics book has to mention this, not only because it is one of the most important techniques in modern biophysics, but also because it's an excellent example of how waves interact with individual atoms.

The chapters are arranged to explain the underlying physics and then covers how that applies to biology. For instance, the first chapters start with the basics of motion and then covers waves and finally soundwaves and how hearing works. The book seems to focus mostly on physics with occasional chapters explaining how that applies to real world biology.

The chapter on hearing focuses mostly on the sound waves and doesn't spend a lot of time on how the sound is perceived in the cochlea and barely mentions the ion channels that are used to conduct the perception of sound to the brain.

In the end, this is an excellent introduction to physics with worked examples that are relevant to all of us, especially biologists. It is not a full-blown biophysics book. To do that, it would need more biology, greater discussion of ion channels, and more protein structures (and explanation of how the structures were obtained). If this book is required/recommended for your course, it's a high quality book and worth getting. If you're a physicist with a passing interest in biology, it's also worth considering. If you're an actual biophysicist, or studying biophysics to a high level in grad school, this probably won't cover the areas that you really need, although it's still good for the physics basics that you'll need.

This book is wonderful! I highly recommend it, makes learning physics much more applicable and exciting. I wish i found this book when i was an undergraduate

Whether you want to learn about how physics work, or taking a physics class, this book is for you. This book is to to teach people about physics, whether you have little knowledge, advanced and would like to know more, or a student in college studying health sciences.

This book is made to build on top of itself so it is easier to understand the concepts. There are 6 different sections:Mechanics, Bulk Materials, Thermodynamics, Electricity and DC circuits, Optics, Radiation and Health. Each of these chapters have different examples, picture diagrams, and challenge thinking questions, to get you to recap and get the main ideas of each. Even though I do not have a class requiring this book, I feel that students will benefit from using this book.

So whether you are just into physics and learning, or you are studying in the health science field, I would recommend this book. You will learn alot, it's easy to understand as the concepts build on themselves, and it is well worth the price.