Physics and Biology Collaborate to Color the World

Abstract

To understand how life works, it is essential to understand physics and chemistry. Physics informs and enlightens biology in myriad dimensions, yet many biology courses proceed with little or no consideration of physical properties or principles. The intersection between physics and biology is explored in this review of online media.

Mitochondria at the Nanoscale: Physics Meets Biology—What Does It Mean for Medicine?

“…Physics can also help to reveal the operation principles by constructing simple models of complex structures. In the words of Phil Nelson (cited in [ 104 ]): “Physical models are often weirdly, unreasonably effective in stripping away the inessential from a biological system—and in displaying connections between things that seemed not obviously connected to our untrained imagination”. This is precisely what we have done in our works on mitochondrial proton-pumping complexes, which are overviewed in this paper.…”

A functional model of the cochlea

“…the living thing [1,2]. A few examples are electric fishes, migrating birds and fishes, echo-location used by dolphins and bats, snake's infrared and spider's polarized vision and much more [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In addition, the human being itself is an interesting object for physics observations [10][11][12].…”