Syllabus
Radiation Biophysics
Physics 561
Department of Biological, Chemical, and Physical Sciences
spring 2003
Instructor: Andrew Howard
Campus Office:
Life Sciences room 174, main campus, Illinois Institute of Technology
3101 South Dearborn Street, Chicago Illinois 60616
phone 312-567-5881, fax 312-567-3576, pager 630-905-0534
email address:
howard@iit.edu
I am on campus ordinarily on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Office Hours: 2-3:30pm Mondays, 10-5pm Wednesdays;
others by appointment. Internet students are welcome to telephone me
at any time at this phone number or at the APS phone number (below).
APS Office:
Sector 17, Building 435A, Advanced Photon Source
Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue
Argonne, Illinois 60439, phone 630-252-0534, fax 630-252-0521
Course Plan:
The general purpose of the course is to introduce the students to
the physical and biological realities of the interaction between
radiation and tissue. We begin with an overview of radiation physics
and chemistry (covered in other Health Physics courses) and concentrate
for the remainder of the semester on biological interactions. We will
stick fairly close to the textbook.
The catalog's description of the course material is as follows:
Energy loss by ionizing radiation. Target theory. Direct and indirect action.
Radiation effects in biomolecules. Radiation inactivation of enzymes,
nucleic acids and viruses. Biological effects of ultraviolet radiation.
Photosensitization. Radiation protection and sensitization.
Radiation effects in vivo, radiation therapy, phototherapy.
I will endeavor to cover all of these topics in varying degrees of
detail, but the coverage of viruses, ultraviolet radiation, and
phototherapy will be very limited.
Class Hours and Location:
every Wednesday from 22 January 2003 through 7 May 2003 inclusive,
except 19 March
6:25pm through 9:05 pm
room 236, Stuart Building, Illinois Institute of Technology
final exam on Wednesday 14 May 2003 from 7:30pm to 9:30 pm
Course Text:
Edward L. Alpen, Radiation Biophysics, 2nd. Ed. San Diego: Academic
Press, 1998. 520 pp., cloth. ISBN 0-12-053085-6. $69.95.
Available from the IIT bookstores or from the major on-line book dealers.
We will augment the course text from time to time (particularly
in the discussion on radiation chemistry and in the final lecture)
with outside materials.
Special Note:
I urgently need each of you to let me know the e-mail address you really
use as soon as possible. All of you have been assigned e-mail addresses by
IIT, but if those aren't the ones you're using, I need to know what you
really are using so I can reach you. This course depends heavily on my
ability to communicate with you by e-mail and your ability to reach me the
same way. I promise that those of youo taking the course through the
Distance-Learning program will want and need to communicate with me
electronically--because that's how I'm going to get to know you.
Grading System
- written homework: 20%
various written exercises, to be announced.
I strongly encourage you to turn in your homework by e-mail to
the e-mail addresses given above. If the assignment cannot be
easily encapsulated in e-mail, you may turn it in on paper, by fax,
or by snail-mail, but the easiest way for me to track your
assignments is for you to e-mail them to me.
Attached files or plain text will both work fine.
If you use attachments, please send them as plain text or
in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, or else as PDFs or graphics files.
There are some software packages (e.g. Microsoft Works) for which I
don't own a translator package, so the only way I can extract information
from them is with stone knives and bearskins.
Graphics files are a good choice if you decide to write your answers
out with a pen and then scan them. If you do that, make sure that
the page you scan is clean!
- first midterm: 20%
This one-hour midterm will be given in the second half of class on 25 February
and will cover material in chapters 1-7, i.e. the material discussed
in the first five lectures.
- second midterm: 20%
This one-hour midterm will be given in the second half of class on 9 April and
will cover material in chapters 8-11.
- final exam: 40%
This exam will be given from 7:30pm to 9:30pm on Wednesday 14 May 2003
and will cover all the course material, with particular emphasis on
the last few lectures.
The time of the exam is not absolutely certain; check this page for
updates later in the semester. As usual, for the Internet students
we are reasonably accomodating about when you take this exam.
Policies:
- All information about the course will be found on the course web page,
http://agni.phys.iit.edu/~howard/radbio/.
- Homework is due at 11:59pm on the Friday following the date
of the lecture on which it is based, i.e., nine days after
the lecture. Generally the assignment associated
with a particular lecture will be posted on the website prior to the
lecture, and at worst it will be posted the day after. So you will
always have at least six days to work on the homework.
Working on homework in groups is acceptable provided the final
product is yours alone.
Late homework will be accepted at a modest penalty.
I am not planning to grade the homework assignments;
instead, I will note whether or not you did the assignment.
I will examine them far enough to see clearly that you've actually worked
on the assignments, though.
- Alpen's book is rife with misprints and typographical errors.
Any misprint, typographical error, or error in fact that you locate
in the book before I do will provide you with a small bonus
on your score for the course.