Open book examination to be completed and returned by 3:00 p.m. Friday, December 12, 1986. You may use any available references or your notes, but do not consult with other students or staff regarding questions or answers.
Be sure to turn in any remaining parts of the graphic problem set.
1. Write a difficult question that would be appropriate for the Biophysics final exam this quarter and to which you happen to know the answer. Then supply the answer.
2. Measure your own heart rate over a period of fifteen minutes using a schedule of measurements derived by you to demonstrate quantitatively the constancy or variability of this rate. Give specified best estimates of mean rate, its variability and its trend. Then in successive five minute intervals, prove whether you can, without special training, exercise, or breath holding, cause your heart rate to drop substantially and then to rise above mean rate. Explain your analytical techniques and results.
3. Select a biological material that in your opinion should be capable of exhibiting measurable strain birefringence. Without actually doing the experiment, explain how the sample would be mounted, examined and tested and your rationale for expected results.
4. We have discussed at length the basic strategy so common in microscopy and in many different representations of non-geometric phase spaces whereby the highly developed human skills for perceiving three dimensional spatial images often color coded or dynamically changing, that requires only the learning of a new translational language. Devise and describe such a phase-space representation of your own invention or alternatively report from the literature a good example of this technique, explaining its merits and shortcomings.
5. Using the large bone of your upper arm (Humerus) as a rigid body reference, determine and specify the number of degrees of freedom that you can identify as being necessary to determine the position of your forearm, wrist and fingers, explaining your choices. Do not complicate the problem by acknowledging that bone articulations do have some slight dimensional perturbations due to variations in synovial fluid layers etc.
6.
A. Sketch the image that a lens having a) Pincushion distortion and b) Barrel distortion might make when viewing a sheet of quadrille paper. How does magnification vary with radius in each case?
B. What are the differences between Standard Deviation, Standard Error and Probable Error as used in conventional statistical analysis? When is each especially appropriate?
C. A conventional compound microscope with a sixteen mm focal length objective and a one inch focal length ocular would have approximately what magnification as this term is ordinarily used?
D. Recurrent biological events that are the main concern of chronobiological analysis may be examined in frequency domain, time domain, or episodal domains. Compare briefly the faults and merits of these approaches.
E. Biophysical science is often concerned with “Fields” of various sorts. Explain briefly the features common to all these “Fields” and the special features that make them different dimensionally, or in overall nature.