  We have developed a set of laboratories and hands on activities to accompany
a new two-semester interdisciplinary physics course that has been successfully
developed and tested in two small test classes of students at the University of
Maryland, College Park (UMD) in 2012-2013. We have designed the laboratories to
be taken accompanying a reformed course in the student's second year, with
calculus, biology, and chemistry as prerequisites. This permits the
laboratories to include significant content on physics relevant to cellular
scales, from chemical interactions to random motion and charge screening in
fluids. We also introduce the students to research-grade equipment and modern
physics analysis tools in contexts relevant to biology, while maintaining the
pedagogically valuable open-ended laboratory structure of reformed
laboratories. Preliminary student results from these two small test classes are
discussed.
