Having knowledge in both chemistry and physics is essential to be a biologist because physics helps with understanding physiology better and chemistry helps understand how the body works. Physics keeps the body on the ground with gravity and gravity affects the body in ways that manifest in body movements only working in a certain direction. Physics also can be incorporated into muscle movement with how much force is put behind piping a pipette or even throwing a punch. Chemistry helps breakdown what’s going on within an organism to a microscopic level or smaller. Chemistry helps breakdown what exactly is in the blood or what exactly somebody is made-up of.
An artifact of chemistry within biology would be the metabolic lab from biology 207 human anatomy and physiology II. In this lab we had to calculate the metabolic rate for a human being within the normal range. This lab shows how the metabolic rate breaks down and react with oxygen and how it creates energy.
An artifact of physics within biology would be the reflexes lab from biology 206 human anatomy and physiology I. This lab incorporates how quickly are muscles move with external stimuli and without external stimuli. We timed how quickly we could catch a ruler with somebody saying drop and then without them saying drop. This incorporated gravity and velocity of the ruler along with the measurement of where our hand landed on the ruler. This allowed us to calculate how quickly our reflexes were in both instances.
An example of another artifact for chemistry would be the Botulism toxin presentation that was done in biology 364. In this presentation we talked about the chemical makeup of Botulism and how it affects the human body. We talked about how Botulism is a neurotoxin that is used to block acetylcholine receptors. Botulism is known more commonly as Botox, which is commonly used as a cosmetic drug. We also talked about how Botox is also used to treat migraines or severe headaches due to it being a neurotoxin. The chemical response of the body when Botox or Botulism is injected into the body chemical response that affects the receptors.
Physics and chemistry will be applied in my future career as a medical laboratory science in a few ways. Physics will be applied with using a centrifuge because that will help separate blood samples with the force of the spinning. Using physics, I could calculate how quickly this interview has to move and how long it would take for the desired effects to occur. Chemistry will be used a lot within the medical laboratory sciences because there’s an actual section of the medical laboratory sciences called chemistry. This is where a lot of the blood test looking for heavy metals or other type of enzymes within the blood would occur. Chemistry is also involved with the urine pregnancy test that are used within the medical lab because if the pregnancy test doesn’t have the right enzymes on it then the test won’t work correctly.