Three Online "Textbooks"
Three tools to consider if you need some
interdiscipline: HyperPhysics, Kimball's Biology Pages, and The Basics of
NMR.
Textbooks can be great resources, but they are
costly, hard to search, and, let's face it, they're heavy. For a free,
searchable, and virtually weightless alternative, there are several online
resources I've found recently that I think are worth adding to our "Tools"
category.
HyperPhysics
The 20th Century saw a lot of changes to the framework of physics, but at the same time, some concepts remain essentially fixed, and sometimes all you need is a quick reminder. Like, "what is the formula for blackbody radiation exactly?" HyperPhysics has just about any topic you would normally find in a textbook, but with all the added value of links between topics. It even has sections on chemistry, geophysics, biology, and math (although for math, I'm not sure anyone can beat Mathworld from Wolfram Research).
Image source: HyperPhysics
HyperPhysics is maintained by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. The results from the site often show up in google searches, but you can also use google to search the site directly by using google's domain constraint. For example if you want to search for "phase" you would type the following google:
phase site:hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu
We will try to put in links to HyperPhysics when we mention physics topics so that those seeking interdiscipline from other fields will not be stymied by vocabulary (as we so often are when we read biological things).
Kimball's Biology Pages
Not knowing much about biology, but being fascinated by it and its molecules, we at the plexus are always looking for useful resources to help in our own quest for interdiscipline. I was reading a story about transcription factors, and I had no idea what they are so I did a search and up came with this nice page on gene regulation from Kimball's Biology Pages. There are so many links you could probably spend way too long following a thread, but I like the way you can really get a feel for the interconnectedness of biology. Reading a linear textbook never really captures this sense. The only problem I have with this site is one that I have in general with biological things, I can never figure out how general an idea is. They give a concept and then they give one example and move on. I guess that's just the way things are when there are so many exceptions and special cases. Anyway, all I'm saying is that I find it much harder to get a big picture first and then to dive into the details. Maybe if you're more bottom up, you'll do better.
The maintainer of this site, Dr. John W. Kimball, is described on the site:
John W. Kimball has retired from a lifetime of teaching biology. A graduate of Harvard College, he began his teaching career at the secondary level, teaching chemistry and biology to students at Phillips Academy, an independent school in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1969, he returned to Harvard to study immunology with the late Professor A. M. Pappenheimer. After receiving his Ph.D. there, he went on to teach introductory biology (in both majors and nonmajors courses) and immunology at Tufts University where he became a tenured professor. In 1982 he returned again to Harvard where he taught immunology and also participated in teaching the introductory course for majors.
The Basics of NMR
This is a topic I never thought was very interesting. In organic chemistry, they showed us tiny little molecules and said how there was spin and that if you think of other nuclei as little magnets they can couple to other spins and that how many peaks you get depends on how many different kinds of nuclei there were and what they were connected to, and blah, blah, blah. I never figured it out and would usually just guess which peaks corresponded to which nuclei and usually I was wrong.
This reflects one of the problems of interdiscipline. Often one is forced to use ideas and techniques one is simply not prepared to fully comprehend. We didn't know anything about Hamiltonians and basis functions and coupling and all the whatnot that you need in order to really know what all those peaks mean.
Fast-forward about ten years. Using ultrafast laser pulses, we can exploit the same ideas that people have been using for years to study spins, only we can do it with vibrational and electronic energy levels. Now I see why NMR is important, because we can just change the states, the Hamiltonians, and the couplings and use all the stuff they've already figured out to do our new spectroscopy tricks. One problem is that a lot of us thought NMR was boring, so we don't know it very well. Hence our interest in The Basics of NMR. This is a real textbook on the web, complete with animations and full-out equations. I think that between this site and Richard Ernst's great book Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in One and Two Dimensions, we will be well on our way to understanding this powerful methodology—so we can shamelessly steal whatever we can.
Image source: The Basics of NMR
The author is Joseph P. Hornak, a professor of Chemistry and Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
HyperPhysics
The 20th Century saw a lot of changes to the framework of physics, but at the same time, some concepts remain essentially fixed, and sometimes all you need is a quick reminder. Like, "what is the formula for blackbody radiation exactly?" HyperPhysics has just about any topic you would normally find in a textbook, but with all the added value of links between topics. It even has sections on chemistry, geophysics, biology, and math (although for math, I'm not sure anyone can beat Mathworld from Wolfram Research).
Image source: HyperPhysics
HyperPhysics is maintained by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. The results from the site often show up in google searches, but you can also use google to search the site directly by using google's domain constraint. For example if you want to search for "phase" you would type the following google:
phase site:hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu
We will try to put in links to HyperPhysics when we mention physics topics so that those seeking interdiscipline from other fields will not be stymied by vocabulary (as we so often are when we read biological things).
Kimball's Biology Pages
Not knowing much about biology, but being fascinated by it and its molecules, we at the plexus are always looking for useful resources to help in our own quest for interdiscipline. I was reading a story about transcription factors, and I had no idea what they are so I did a search and up came with this nice page on gene regulation from Kimball's Biology Pages. There are so many links you could probably spend way too long following a thread, but I like the way you can really get a feel for the interconnectedness of biology. Reading a linear textbook never really captures this sense. The only problem I have with this site is one that I have in general with biological things, I can never figure out how general an idea is. They give a concept and then they give one example and move on. I guess that's just the way things are when there are so many exceptions and special cases. Anyway, all I'm saying is that I find it much harder to get a big picture first and then to dive into the details. Maybe if you're more bottom up, you'll do better.
The maintainer of this site, Dr. John W. Kimball, is described on the site:
John W. Kimball has retired from a lifetime of teaching biology. A graduate of Harvard College, he began his teaching career at the secondary level, teaching chemistry and biology to students at Phillips Academy, an independent school in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1969, he returned to Harvard to study immunology with the late Professor A. M. Pappenheimer. After receiving his Ph.D. there, he went on to teach introductory biology (in both majors and nonmajors courses) and immunology at Tufts University where he became a tenured professor. In 1982 he returned again to Harvard where he taught immunology and also participated in teaching the introductory course for majors.
The Basics of NMR
This is a topic I never thought was very interesting. In organic chemistry, they showed us tiny little molecules and said how there was spin and that if you think of other nuclei as little magnets they can couple to other spins and that how many peaks you get depends on how many different kinds of nuclei there were and what they were connected to, and blah, blah, blah. I never figured it out and would usually just guess which peaks corresponded to which nuclei and usually I was wrong.
This reflects one of the problems of interdiscipline. Often one is forced to use ideas and techniques one is simply not prepared to fully comprehend. We didn't know anything about Hamiltonians and basis functions and coupling and all the whatnot that you need in order to really know what all those peaks mean.
Fast-forward about ten years. Using ultrafast laser pulses, we can exploit the same ideas that people have been using for years to study spins, only we can do it with vibrational and electronic energy levels. Now I see why NMR is important, because we can just change the states, the Hamiltonians, and the couplings and use all the stuff they've already figured out to do our new spectroscopy tricks. One problem is that a lot of us thought NMR was boring, so we don't know it very well. Hence our interest in The Basics of NMR. This is a real textbook on the web, complete with animations and full-out equations. I think that between this site and Richard Ernst's great book Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in One and Two Dimensions, we will be well on our way to understanding this powerful methodology—so we can shamelessly steal whatever we can.
Image source: The Basics of NMR
The author is Joseph P. Hornak, a professor of Chemistry and Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Posted: Tue - November 30, 2004 at 12:23 PM |
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Published On: Jul 18, 2005 04:17 PM
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