Hierarchical biomechanics: an introductory teaching framework

Biological organisms function as the result of a multitude of complex physical systems all interacting with one another at different length scales and over different time scales. At stages of education below university undergraduate level, this complexity often prevents the discussion of physics within a biological context, subtly implying that the two fields are completely distinct from one another. With science becoming steadily more interdisciplinary at the level of research, this distinction can therefore be quite counterproductive, and potentially even misleading for students with regard to the nature of the scientific method. To explore the interplay between biology and physics with prospective STEM students, we present a series of formal teaching activities utilising a novel piece of experimental equipment we have designed called BioNetGrid. We are able to use BioNetGrid to cover a range of physical concepts at an introductory level, such as Hooke’s law, springs in series and parallel, Poisson’s ratio, elastic modulus and energy distribution. These can be presented together with specific biological systems as examples, such as biopolymer networks, enabling a discussion of the importance of biophysics in research at an earlier stage in a student’s academic career.