MathBench > Cellular Processes

Diffusion

General Functions and Diffusion


Before we leave this section, we just want to stress one REALLY, REALLY important concept.

All of the graphs and functions that we have shown should be already be familiar to you from your general math courses. Just because they are formulated here in reference to flux, diffusion and gradients, doesn't mean they have any special properties or rules. All the rules you have learned about graphing and manipulation of these general equations and how those functions look on a graph apply here. These same equations come up over and over in biology, physics, chemistry and any other science you take. The more familiar they are and comfortable you get recognizing them, the easier all this math stuff will become.

So, one more time, we're going to show you the

1) general equations (that you should recognize from your high school math classes!),

2) the specific formulation for its application to diffusion, and

3) the graph of the associated function

Fick's First Law as a function of GRADIENT
Fick's First Law as a function of DISTANCE
Fick's Second Law, or
Time to Diffuse