Subject Code/Name: PHYC10007: Physics for BiomedicineWorkload: Contact Hours: 3 x one hour lectures per week; 1 x one hour tutorial per week; 28 hours of practical work (8 x three hour laboratory sessions and up to 30 minutes of pre-laboratory activity) and 10 weekly assignments of 30 minutes each during the semester.
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours
Assessment: Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).
Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, Prof Robert Scholten writes on the blackboard a lot, which won't be captured. It's probably best to make the effort to come to his lectures at least.
Past exams available: Yes, all the way back to 2008. However, only answers (not worked solutions) are provided.
Textbook Recommendation: R Knight, B Jones and S Field,
College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition Addison-Wesley, 2010.
You'll be asked to pre-read before lectures and complete problems from the textbook afterwards, so this textbook is required. If I recall correctly the Physics department may have a copy of this textbook up online somewhere. If not, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it. I found that it explained the concepts quite well, although it probably goes into more detail than what you need to know.
In addition, you will need to purchase a lab book with all the practicals in it and a logbook to write your reports in.
Lecturer(s):A/Prof Martin Sevior: Weeks 1-6 - Motion, Fluids, Thermal Physics
Prof Robert Scholten: Weeks 7-12 - Electricity, Magnetism, Electromagnetism, Sound, Light, Radioactivity
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2014
Rating: 3.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Comments:So many of you know that I absolutely detested Physics during high school and dropped it after Units 1 & 2. I thought I was done with it, until this nasty surprise of a subject came up. I've heard terrible things about Physics for Biomedicine in the past and I was prepared for the absolute worst (I didn't think it could get any worse, but then again I was likely to be wrong). Well, to my surprise, it didn't eventuate, and, if it's humanly possible, may have changed my outlook on Physics just a little bit.
I should probably first explain my prior background in Physics before proceeding because it's going to make a fairly big difference compared to a lot of other people. I came from a fairly advantaged position in that I had done VCE Physics Units 1 & 2 and VCE Specialist Mathematics Units 3 & 4. In other words, I was pretty much in the most advanced position to be taking this subject over Physics 2: Life Sciences and Environment. The only technicality was that I hadn't done VCE Physics Units 3 & 4. Honestly, I had at least touched on 90% of the content covered in this subject before so not a lot of it was new. In comparison, there are students in there with no background in Physics whatsoever, and only completed VCE Mathematical Methods (CAS). So there was quite a distinct gap here. That being said, just because I had seen it before didn't necessarily mean I already understood it - I didn't understand it then, and frankly, I'm not sure if I understand it now.
But I guess it probably made a difference in some ways anyway. So to sum up, no, Physics for Biomedicine was not my first real taste of Physics as a science (but I sure hope it's my last
).
So Physics for Biomedicine is designed to provide an introduction to Physics for those who have not completed the subject at Year 12 level, and is primarily concerned with giving you some preparation for the upcoming GAMSAT. In terms of GAMSAT preparation, the VCE Physics course probably prepares you better - this subject is not sufficient alone and the staff are open to you about that from the beginning. This will get you started off, but you're going to have to learn a lot more on your own during the summer in order to sit the GAMSAT with confidence. Being a Chancellor's Scholar, I'm fairly fortunate that this isn't a concern for me so now that the exam is done I don't need to continue studying. Ultimately this is the reason why you're taking this subject, although they regularly make the effort to show how Physics relates to the rest of life science. Sometimes this was done in a really condescending way (like talking about the velocity of red blood cells in veins <_<) but in many ways I was quite surprised with its relevance to biomedical science and while Physics isn't my absolute favourite (or an absolute necessity given my fortunate position), I'm glad I was made to do this subject anyway.
A/Prof Martin Sevior takes the first six weeks of the course and teaches you about motion, fluids and thermal physics, while Prof Robert Scholten takes the second six weeks and goes over electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism, sound, light and radioactivity. I'm pretty sure both take other first year Physics courses (if I'm not mistaken I think Martin is a lecturer for Physics 1: Fundamentals over in Science) so they're very familiar with the difficulties many face when first introduced to Physics, and they make a real effort to address these right from the beginning. The lecture notes are comprehensive and easy to follow and you'll go through plenty of worked examples and conceptual questions during the lectures (although there was one lecturer - who I won't name - that usually rushed and did a pretty crappy job lol). In addition you also get to witness a lot of demonstrations during the lectures. At times they felt like a waste of time, but a lot of them were interesting. Personally, a lot of the time Physics seems to go against my "common sense" so actually being able to see it in real life helped me significantly in
accepting understanding the concepts.
Overall I thought that both the lecturers were reasonably competent. The subject has undergone a change from previous years in that it was recognised that light and sound (which were previously not part of this course) were actually fairly prominent on the GAMSAT (and amongst some of the most relevant knowledge to biomedical science students) and so Rob substituted them in for relativity and quantum physics. My only qualm though is that these changes were being made as we were going along, rather than prior to the subject's commencement. It meant we were left with constant uncertainty and an unclear sense of direction during the semester.
In terms of studying this subject, Physics for Biomedicine is quite different to the other core subjects you do in first year. There is very little note-taking but quite an emphasis on conceptual understanding to guide your way through all the quantitative problem solving. A lot of people found the content overly difficult - and I often found it difficult as well - but I think it was just that many weren't used to the confusion that tends to come when you study Physics, while I was quite accustomed to it.
In reality, I could see that a lot of the concepts had been watered down quite a bit for us, which is why you need to go further in your own time once this subject has been completed. Overall, once I had gone over the entire course properly during SWOTVAC, I think fluids was the most difficult topic, but it took me quite a while to grasp many of Rob's topics.
There are eight practicals to complete in this subject and they make up 25% of your grade. Like many I don't really like practicals that much but given my inability to visualise the concepts very well on my own I can appreciate why there are so many of them to do throughout the semester in addition to the demonstrations during lectures. How well you do in this component of the assessment though is largely dependent upon your demonstrator. Mine was pretty crap: most of the time he walked in 15 minutes late and was unaware of what we were doing until he took a lab book and read through the practical himself. Then he mainly just told us when we were doing things wrong and didn't help us out on how to fix it - other than telling us to "think about it." <_< However, he was an incredibly lenient marker - it makes me wonder if he even read our work - so the final result ended up in my favour. I think we were supposed to swap demonstrators and partners half way during the semester, but this never happened for us. I've heard that the practicals get scaled in accordance to your exam score, and that only your best ones contribute to your final grade. I'm not actually sure about these rumours so I can't confirm them with you at this stage. The experiments you do are almost identical to the ones done in Physics 2: Life Sciences and Environment (in fact this subject as a whole ends up very similar) and due to the course changes a couple don't line up with your lecture content at all (and some of the new topics have no practical component to them); however they shouldn't pose you too many problems.
Prior to each practical, there is a pre-lab in the lab book which you should make an attempt at completing (my demonstrator was obsessed with these for some reason), and an online pre-practical test which counts for a small percentage of the practical grade. These tests are much more simple than the ones for Biology and Chemistry so don't stress about them too much. Similar to the Chemistry practicals in semester 1, it is your job to write up a log/report of what's happening during the practical. Plenty of guidance is provided online on the LMS and in the lab book (which poses you questions and tells you where the mark allocations are) and after a few goes you'll eventually get it right. My first entry, like many in my group, was apparently too long and detailed (again, I'm not sure if this is just my demonstrator being lazy or not) but on the second go I was getting them about right. Your logbooks remain in the laboratory so unfortunately you can't prepare beforehand by writing the introduction, aim, equipment and method from home (although my demonstrator let us take them home once by mistake
). Most of the practicals aren't exceptionally pressured for time with a couple of exceptions, like perhaps the first practical or when you waste a lot of time trying to assemble rather complicated equipment, so as long as you're diligent you should be able to complete your write-up in the lab. What's most misleading about the Physics practicals is their timetabling: the timetable stipulates that they go for three hours duration when in reality they only go for two and a half - the last half hour is assigned to the demonstrators marking the logbooks. This really caught me out at first. Some demonstrators will ask you to leave when the two and a half hours are up regardless of whether you've finished or not; others (like mine) were more lenient and allowed us to stay on until we were finished.
The other assessment during the semester are the ten assignments, which total up to 15% of your final grade. These are done through the MasteringPhysics program, where you answer all different sorts of conceptual and quantitative questions. They tend to become tedious and a bit of a pain after a while, and they can take a couple of hours to work on each week. They shouldn't pose too many issues, although the internet should be able to help you out if you need any help. If you treat the assignments properly, they can be a good learning tool.
The usefulness of the weekly tutorials is largely dependent on your tutor. In many classes the students were encouraged to get together in groups and work out the problems on the whiteboards, but my tutor insisted that we just watch her write up the worked solutions (consequently we always finished the class really really early). The tutorial sheets themselves are actually quite good, and worked solutions are provided for them at the end of every week. I guess they somewhat render the tutorials a bit pointless, although attendance was taken for each one, even though tutorial attendance is not an assessment or hurdle requirement. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you complete the worksheets and follow up any problems or queries.
The final exam is three hours in duration and worth 60% of your grade. It consists of short answer questions only, with a total of 150 marks. Each major topic gets tested in one question and most questions are quantitative in nature. Our exam was quite different to the other past exams due to all the course changes, but they're still worth doing nonetheless, especially for the parts that are still in the current course. Overall the exam was challenging but not impossible if you had made a good effort over the course of the semester. There was one question on content that we hadn't covered in lectures but was assigned as a textbook reference so don't neglect your readings throughout the semester. Since the MasteringPhysics assignments and the practicals are not difficult to do well in, it's quite likely that you will have a fairly large scope for error on the exam if things don't go to plan. I managed to complete the exam with about 15 minutes to spare and had enough time to check over some problems.
This subject definitely didn't stoop down to the low expectations I had at the start of semester, but there are some ways this subject could be improved. If any changes are made to the course for next year, I hope they're all sorted out prior to the commencement of the semester, and that the practicals are all relevant with more adequately prepared demonstrators. People always find Physics a challenge, and I'm not going to deny that, but with persistence and hard work you should be able to see some progress being made. The general consensus amongst our cohort was that Chemistry for Biomedicine was overall a more painful experience compared to Physics for Biomedicine, if that's any consolation. :S I hope this subject isn't too difficult, provides you with an adequate start to your GAMSAT preparation, and also gives you an appreciation for the role Physics plays in biomedical science. I think that's all I've got to say for now, but if you'd like any extra information or have any questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck!