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Gravitational waves

A spark of life

Electric circuits and biological cell processes

How is a simple electric circuit related to a living cell? What happens in a neuron when a nerve signal is generated? Katherine Dunn explains how physics is helping us to understand an important biological process

The terms in bold link to topics in the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA A-level specifications, as well as the IB, Pre-U and SQA exam specifications.

The flow of ions across the membrane that encloses a living cell can be modelled as the discharge of a capacitor through a resistor, described by equations for energy storage and exponential discharge. Expressing the small quantities involves manipulating SI units together with their multipliers and prefixes.

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Gravitational waves