1.5 Students will be able to integrate physics and chemistry concepts into relevant biological contexts.

My main passion has always been biology, but anything STEM related usually interests me. For biology to work properly, physics and chemistry must be taken into account. The first time this really resonated with me was through our entering research course freshman year. It was centered around the Chesapeake Bay and the issues plaguing it. After spending a week at Hull Springs, I was very excited to continue learning about why and how these issues occur. Specifically, the amount of hypoxic areas, or dead zones, in the bay. These areas have less oxygen than the organisms need to survive, resulting in mass death. To fully understand why the oxygen is depleted, I needed to understand the chemistry behind algal blooms. This is where my newly found knowledge of Chemistry 111 was a large help. On top of lots of publication research, I was able to conduct my own experiment for algal blooms. I think that the cross discipline approach for this issue was most useful. I was able to apply my knowledge of molecules and their properties to growth requirements for algae. Here is the link to my introduction for my dissolved oxygen project from ISCI 120, and here is the link to my algal blooms poster from Chem 111. The graph is missing on the poster as my professor had added them in for us prior to printing. Additionally, physics is important for normal biological processes to occur. In my vertebrate physiology class, I was learning about how our blood circulates through our body. This is powered by forces created by our heart muscle. This sort of energy makes sense in a physics lens. To further investigate this, we also looked at cold blooded animals who require heat for their blood circulation. It was so fascinating to see how this worked and how these animals have adapted to living around the sun. I also got to write a general audience paper on a similar topic, of thermoregulation in older humans. Here is a link to a reflection on this topic.