The blog is dead. Long live the blog!

Intermediate Physics for
Medicine and Biology.

All good things must come to an end. After nearly eight years of posting an entry to this blog every Friday morning, I must say goodbye. This is the last entry to my blog dedicated to the 4th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. I hope you have found it useful.

Next week will be the first entry to the blog for the FIFTH edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology! You can now purchase the 5th edition at the Springer website. Amazon does not have a page for the book yet, but it should be coming soon.

What’s new in the 5th edition? The preface states

The Fifth Edition does not add any new chapters, but almost every page has been improved and updated. Again, we fought the temptation to expand the book and deleted material when possible. Some of the deleted material is available at the book’s website: [https://sites.google.com/view/hobbieroth]. The Fifth Edition has 12% more end-of-chapter problems than the Fourth Edition; most highlight biological applications of the physical principles. Many of the problems extend the material in the text. A solutions manual is available to those teaching the course. Instructors can use it as a reference or provide selected solutions to their students. The solutions manual makes it much easier for an instructor to guide an independent-study student. Information about the solutions manual is available at the book’s website.

The 5th edition is only 13 pages longer than the 4th. By deleting or condensing obsolete or less important topics, we made room for some new sections, including

• 1.2 Models (about toy models and their different roles in biology and physics)
• 1.15 Diving (SCUBA diving and the bends)
• 2.6 The Chemostat
• 8.1.2 The Cyclotron
• 8.8.4 Magnetic nanoparticles
• 9.10.5 Microwaves, Mobile Phones, and Wi-Fi
• 10.7 Proportional, Derivative, and Integral Control
• 13.1.3 Shear waves
• 13.7.4 Elastography (using ultrasound imaging)
• 13.7.5 Safety (of ultrasound imaging)
• 14.2 Electron Waves and Particles: The Electron Microscope
• 14.9.2 Photodynamic Therapy
• 14.15 Color Vision
• 18.14 Hyperpolarized MRI of the Lung

There is no errata yet, but despite our best efforts to find and remove all mistakes I suspect we will start finding errors in the 5th edition soon, and we’ll tell you about them if we do. As always, if YOU find errors in the book, please let us know.

Enjoy!