Explanation of the Work

By making a general science education available without charge, we hope to improve things around the world a little, and we also hope to contribute to progress in unifying science educational curricula. Undergraduate level physics, chemistry, organic chemistry and biology are presented by this course as a unified whole within a spiraling curriculum. Although the full learning program was specifically designed for students preparing for the admissions exam for United States medical school, the MCAT, any person with an interest in science may benefit from the resources of WikiPremed. There is no tuition or fee.

The WikiPremed MCAT Course is a comprehensive review of the premedical curriculum within the context of United States educational practices, where the general sciences are mastered at the undergraduate level prior to formal medical education. This contrasts with much of the world where medical school includes the undergraduate general sciences. Regardless of these differences, this learning program will qualitatively advance your understanding of the physical and biological sciences no matter where you live, so all premedical students, all future scientists and all future engineers, can benefit a great deal from the resources of this website.

The WikiPremed Course is the most sophisticated MCAT review course. It is the only MCAT review course that represents a genuine step forward for science education. There is no registration fee, and a great treasure of course materials are available free on this site, although a few printed course materials may be necessary as well as AAMC practice tests. Regarding the time commitment for the course, a strong student should expect to devote at least fifteen hours per week to this course for at least twenty weeks. The WikiPremed Course teaches the undergraduate physical and biological sciences within a unified curriculum. To expect to achieve its learning goals in less than a year's time a student should already have a good background in undergraduate level science. For Advanced Placement, IB or A Level students, it might be possible to work through the material in two years within a program of guided study.

The Main Sequence of the WikiPremed Course makes its way through the physical and biological sciences with the topics woven together in an integrated order. This is a unified course, an interdisciplinary, spiraling program developed over many years in small group teaching. In our small group MCAT course we discovered how to use interdisciplinary methods to reveal the connections between the sciences. Seeking to help our students in very practical ways to achieve their learning goals, it was only natural to use the disciplines to shine light on each other, and over time these practices developed into a set of methods. Students learn to see the city of scientific knowledge from the bird's eye view as well as street level. In the history of the program, interdisciplinary methods which began as a way to achieve comprehensive familiarity early in the course evolved through years of work into a conscious discipline for choreographing breakthroughs in scientific understanding.

This approach leads to greater joy and interest in science as well as higher MCAT scores. An example of how this works is the focus placed upon the classical electrostatic force early in the learning program, prior to thermodynamics, in contrast to the traditional physics sequence. The electrostatic description of force and energy between point charges provides a bridge in the spriraling curriculum from the fundamentals of physics to the foundation of general chemistry. Learning atomic theory, chemical bonding, and intermolecular force within the electrostatic field of reference establishes the understanding of chemistry upon a more solid conceptual foundation than is possible within traditional undergraduate curricula. Distinguishing modern and classical concepts, this course builds the conceptual understanding of chemical energy change out of physics. We feel strongly that this is how the physical sciences should be taught, not as physics 101 and chemistry 101 unmoored from their common reality. We hope educators at the secondary and undergraduate level will consider our ideas on unifying science curricula.

The next phase is the transition from learning the structure of matter to understanding thermodynamic transformation and chemical change. The WikiPremed Course presents thermodynamics from the perspective of both physics and chemistry, a unified, spiraling sequence through heat & temperature, the laws of thermodynamics, thermochemistry, chemical thermodynamics, equilibrium and chemical kinetics. We arrange the concepts of thermodynamics from physics to shine light on the concepts of thermodynamics from chemistry.

MCAT review gives even the most advanced undergraduate student the opportunity to remediate their scientific knowledge in preparation for medical school. Over years of teaching, we have worked very closely with hundreds of students. We know for a fact that current methods in undergraduate education spectacularly fail the potential that students have for understanding important ideas in science such as energy flow in metabolism. This is true even for students with the full year of biochemistry. Getting down to the brass tacks in MCAT preparation, an area like bioenergetics is one where this learning program will help you find an advantage on the test, by teaching you how to understand science more deeply than other students. At the nexus of the physical sciences, organic chemistry, cellular structure, and metabolism, bioenergetics is where the first half of the course culminates.

The atoms of a mitochondrion, those within and surrounding it are physical, electrodynamic entities. When you can see the wheel of physics turning within the cell, you will understand the natural world in a new way, and you will be ready to begin the second half of the WikiPremed Course, where we study molecular biology, cell biology and human physiology having the conceptual basis to interpret living systems as complex, emergent phenomena within the unity of science. We think that any person with a curiosity about the physical and biological sciences will find the WikiPremed Course to be very fascinating. In a practical sense, a premedical student who diligently studies here for the MCAT will find themselves ready for medical school at the end of this course and capable of demonstrating that fact with a superior performance on the exam. Genuine conceptual understanding is the most sure way to achieve a superior MCAT score.

Syllabus

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