PHYS 231 - Facts of Life

Institution:

Williams College

Subject:

Physics

Description:

The cancer death rate scales like (age)6 so it was thought that a proliferating cancer cell must have acquired 6 mutations. The probability of having had N sexual partners scales like N2.4. Body Mass Index = Mass / Length2. The heart rate is proportional to the organism's mass0.75. The number of policemen scales like population1.15. Power-law relationships often describe emergent phenomena of self-organizing systems. In this course we will learn how to obtain data and plot it in an informative way, including estimates of the errors of fits. We will learn how to describe phenomena with differential equations and to find analytic and numerical solutions. With those tools we will study the human experience: births, body size, sex, death rates (by cause, by age, by gender), metrics of cities, distributions of common names, population growth rates, per capita use of energy, the spread of disease, etc. Projects will involve applying the methods to new phenomena.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

MATH 105

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Other

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.williams.edu

Phone Number:

(413) 597-3131

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Four-one-four plan

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