Modeling: Choosing a Kinetics

The concept of mathematical model is generally new to students of Life Sciences. Biological systems are usually described with cartoon schemes that only illustrate the interactions among different species. A model – as it is conceived in physics – is a mathematical representation that permits to predict the dynamics of a system (i.e. how species concentrations change over a given time interval) under precise assumptions and after defining the system initial conditions. The notion of predictive and quantitative model is here clarified with an example from classical physics.