1. Connecting Physics and Biology at Introductory level Nava Schulmann 13/04/2015

3. Past I have a Ph.D. in Physics focused on elastic properties of polymers.

4. Present I am a post-doctoral fellow at the Science-Teaching department of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel Prof. Samuel Safran, Department of Materials and Interfaces; Prof. Edit Yerushalmi, Dr. Nava Schulman, Dr. Shelly Livne, Dr. Elon Langbheim, Ariel Steiner, Haim Edri, Department of Science Teaching; Dr. Avi Golan, Davidson Institute

5. The challenge However, in the world of research, interdisciplinary is “the name of the game” At introductory level, Physics and Biology are generally taught as parallel disciplines. Idealized, “clean” systems 1-2 homogenous bodies, deterministic explanation Biology Complex, “messy” systems, multi-particle, statistical explanation Physics

6. The program “Randomness and Structure”, a 10-12 th grade course for high achievers in the Davidson Institute, was developed with the aim of bringing students closer to the workshop of science… Break the borders of content areas: physics in a chemical and biological context, Acquire a new language: the language of the “cooperative behavior” of multi- particle systems, Develop new skills: modeling complex phenomena using analytic and computational tools. Prof. Samuel Safran, Department of Materials and Interfaces; Prof. Edit Yerushalmi, Dr. Nava Schulman, Dr. Shelly Livne, Dr. Elon Langbheim, Ariel Steiner, Haim Edri, Department of Science Teaching; Dr. Avi Golan, Davidson Institute

7. Curriculum Overview: from Randomness to Structure… Unit 2: Order in Nature The dynamics of Structure formation: Phase separation, wetting, dimers, polymers, micelles, membranes, liquid crystals… Unit 1: Randomness in Nature and the nature of randomness The dynamics of thermal motion governed phenomena: Diffusion Osmosis …and from Mechanistic to Statistical approach Unit 3: Treating complex systems with probabilistic models Fundamentals of Statistical Thermodynamics

8. Q` detailed elegant Molecular Dynamics Paradigm: Newton laws Hard body collisions Prediction: full trajectories for system and solvent particles Brownian Motion Paradigm: Newton laws friction and stochastic forces. Prediction: trajectories for Brownian particle Random Walk Paradigm: Probabilistic Prediction: system trajectories Probabilistic model Paradigm: probabilistic Prediction: microstates probabilities at equilibrium Understanding Randomness and Experiencing modeling… Four models for Diffusion

9. Future Scaling up: From introductory to advanced courses? From traditional to open courses? … and more personally… How to keep a serious research activity besides educational engagements?