Physics & Biophysics Summer 2017 - Sarah Jystad

Living Systems What is a living system & how do I know I am one? To sum it up simply, I know because of my autopoeisis. My body regenerates itself as an established mature organism. When I was conceived, my DNA laid the foundation for my cellular structure & function and ultimately my whole body, all of its organ systems. Now my mind and body work together to thrive and survive in this biosphere. I respond to the environment & adapt to changes, I maintain my health with food and water of good quality & adequate rest. My body heals itself with these supplies and energy, and my mind doesn't need to be conscious of it. However, my mind can promote healing. If I feed my mental energy into a positive mindset then I stay healthy consistently and heal more readily from injuries and illness. In this way, I am also autopoeitc. I can also see that my perspective and focus can help me produce myself. In other words, to a large extant, I have the ability to create myself and ...

Newton’s Three Laws and me 1st Law of Motion Objects in rest tend to stay at rest & objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. I totally take this realization for granted because it seems like common sense. And now after learning about quantum physics, it seems like it excludes a lot of factors. 2nd Law of Motion Force equals mass x acceleration & Acceleration equals force divided by mass. This makes sense to me. But I don’t feel inspired to elaborate on it a lot.   3rd Law of Motion For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can see this applies in a big way to the physical world, but it doesn’t apply to the world of relationship dynamics or human psychology.  Our “Energy Efficient” Culture The American Culture is undoubtedly wasteful. It's based on excessive consumption & convenience. There’s energy wasted on every level of industrial production and capitalist systems. It’s really u...

Chaos theory: the qualitative study of unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems “Organized Chaos, does this sound familiar?” In the most general sense, one could compare “organized chaos” to living systems: if you picture a living system and its external environment as one web-like entity, you could see that they are inter-dependent and interrelate on every level. Essentially, a living system requires organization and structure; whereas, nature is chaos. You cannot measure a coastline since it is always changing, but a fish has a specific physical structure with a particular input (food) and output (excrement). Fish require a water environment and, in fact, need the chaotic aspect of water: currents and the water cycle, for instance, in order to survive as well. I really like how Nina put it in her blog: we are also examples of organized chaos as we learn to heal and recover from chaotic experiences in life. Her thoughts showed me another lens to loo...