Transport Processes.ppt

Transport Processes 2005/4/24 Dept. Physics, Tunghai Univ. Biophysics?C. T. Shih Movement Movement is one of the defining characteristics of the biological world Movement of different scales: Motion of the entire organisms Motion of the internal organs Motion of a cell Motion within a cell Molecular motions Diffusion – Passive Transport Motion of particles through space Mixing of particles amongst one another – usually for biological systems Brownian motion: Discovered by botanist Robert Brown in 1828 – pollen particles in water Explained by Albert Einstein in 1905 Brownian Motion Einstein showed that Brownian motion is caused by the impacts on the pollen particles of water molecules The process can be characterized by a series of random walk The trajectory of a particle can be divided into small straight paths The particle jumps from point to point Each jump is independent of the history of movement – the process is stochastic (Markov chain) Random Walk For the random walk by m steps without directional bias: Unit length of each step Mean distance r=0 Root mean square distance rrms=√m For a stochastic Brownian motion, D: diffusion coefficient, net flow of particles per unit time per unit area (perpendicular to the direction of flow) Diffusion Driven by Density Difference One dimension diffusion, at a certain time b: the length of a single diffusive jump C(x): number of particles per unit length f: frequency of jumps J: flux of particles (per unit area per unit time) Fick’s First Law: The particles move from the region of higher density toward the lower one Time-Dependent Diffusion The net flux into the region between x and x+L is J(x+L)-J(x), where Fick’s Second Law Solution of Fick’s 2nd Equation Separate the variable: C(x,t)=S(x)T(t) and the equation becomes (let D=a2) LFS: depends only on x; RHS: depends only on t The only possibility is that both sides equal to a constant, say –a2k2 Solution of Fick’s 2nd Equation The general form of solution: T