Course given on fall semester by Ron Milo, teaching fellows: Lior Greenspoon, Liad Ben Uri and Samuel Lovat
Mondays 11:15-13:00 @ Botnar auditorium
Course email (to send exercises, suggestions, errors, insights...): cellbiologybythenumbers@gmail.com
Course outline
Subject 1: Back of envelope/Street fighting quantitative inference
Subject 2: Size and mass
Subject 3: Concentrations and absolute numbers
Subject 4: Rates
Subject 5: Energy and Food Part I
Subject 6: Energy, Food and Planet Earth Part II
Course description and syllabus:
Course email (to send exercises, suggestions, errors, insights...): cellbiologybythenumbers@gmail.com
This course is aimed at exposing students to the practice of making back of the envelope calculations (so called Fermi problems) with key numbers in sustainability, and its useful applications in research. We will learn how to identify the major factors that determine the order of magnitude of the results, when to allow simplification, how to calculate them efficiently, and how to avoid common pitfalls.
The course is composed of weekly lectures on different aspects of sustainability through many examples of basic (yet often surprising) questions:
- Size and geometry (e.g. What weighs more: All human-made things or all living things on our planet?)
- Concentrations and absolute numbers (e.g. How many ants are there and do we really ingest a credit card’s worth of plastic in our lifetime?)
- Energies and Forces (e.g. How much can you climb with an energy snack bar and how much land is needed to grow our food?)
- Rates and durations (e.g. is the rate of climate change and how many people are needed to clean all hiking trails in Israel?)
The last few meetings of the course will be dedicated to presentations of student calculations as a final assignment.
Accompanying texts:
Course book is freely available at: bionumbers
Specific reading material will be given during the course.
* Those who did not take a molecular biology course should read the first few chapters of "Essential Cell Biology", Alberts et al, Garland Science
Other recommended readings (none compulsory, all for enrichment and fun):
- “Guesstimation” by Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam
- “Physical Biology of the Cell” by Rob Phillips, Jane Kondev, Julie Theriot and Hernan Garcia
- “Physiology by Numbers” by Richard Burton (and its partner book “Biology by Numbers” also by Richard Burton)
- “Consider a Spherical Cow” by John Harte (and its partner book “Consider a Cyclindrical Cow” also by John Harte)
- "Street fighting mathmatics" by Sanjoy Mahajan
Grading:
Attendance and active participation is required.
50% - Weekly assignments
50% - Final assignment (presentation + written vignette)
General info on the final assignment
Oral presentation
- 5 minutes with calculation on white board, 2 minute extension for extra aids/features (multi-answer question presented to class, object for demonstration etc.)
- Pay attention to unit conversions, significant digits, big clear handwriting, keep it simple and elegant.
- Assignment of dates will be posted soon!
Written vignette
- 2-3 pages long, with introduction of the question, some background, the calculation, possible outcomes and interesting conclusions.
- To be submitted (after feedback from class peers) 2 weeks after the oral presentation.
Interesting links:
Key numbers in cell biology (with reference links)
Physical Biology of the cell at Caltech - Rob Phillips group
Order of Magnitude Physics course (Prof. Nir Shaviv, in hebrew)