Kid’s Play

August 5th, 2004

In our lecture on blood flow today, we learned what flows, pressures, and resistances were, and also how they’re related to each other according to physics law called Poiseuille’s law. Our professor was spending forever trying to detail step-by-step what this equation and all its variables meant.

And the whole time I was thinking — in addition to how SLOW this guy was teaching — that this topic sounds very familiar. I then realized that I had taught this very same material back at Hopkins to the freshmen in the BME department, for the Models for Life class. Pouiseuille’s Law, pressures, flows, diameters, fourth powers, tubes, viscosity, all that good stuff…and now here I am having it taught back to me. How sad and funny.

Just goes to show you a little something about the minds of medical students and how if you even mention the concept of a math variable, they freak out and need to be spoon fed. It’s pretty strange considering pre-med requirements included a year of calculus and a year of physics. I guess if learning something new doesn’t involve pure memorization, most med students can’t handle it. That’s it…

Posted in Medicine | | Top Of Page

Comments are closed.