APK2105C: Human Physiology

Course Description

APK2105C — statewide title Human Physiology — is the second half of the anatomy and physiology sequence: the body's regulatory and transport systems, and how they hold internal conditions steady while everything around and inside them changes.

The statewide inventory records the course at Florida Polytechnic University, the University of Florida and the University of West Florida.

Institution	Number and title	What the entry says
UF	APK 2105C Applied Human Physiology with Laboratory — ⚠ with the C, and the title names the lab	title confirmed
UWF	⚠ APK 2105 Applied Human Anatomy and Physiology II — no suffix, with APK 2105L as a CO-REQUISITE	"The second of a two-semester sequence of the study of the structure, function, and homeostasis of the human body. The endocrine, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, urinary and reproductive systems will be covered, as well as the concepts of development, metabolism, fluid and electrolyte balance, and acid-base balance." ⚠ Prerequisite: APK 2100C OR BSC 1085/L OR APK 2100/L. College of Health, Department of Movement Sciences and Health, 3 sh.

⚠ Also note the title scope. The statewide title says "Human Physiology"; UWF's says "Applied Human Anatomy and Physiology II." The APK sequence is an integrated anatomy-and-physiology sequence split by system rather than a separate anatomy course followed by a separate physiology course — which is why the first half covers integumentary, skeletal, muscular and nervous systems and this half covers the rest. A course literally titled "Human Physiology" elsewhere may be organised differently.

What the course covers, and the idea that ties it together. ⚠⚠ Homeostasis is not a topic in this course; it is the organising principle of every system in it. Blood pressure, blood glucose, blood pH, body temperature, plasma osmolality and calcium concentration are all held within narrow ranges by negative feedback loops with a sensor, an integrator and an effector — and once a student sees that architecture, each new system becomes a variation rather than a fresh set of facts to memorise. Students who learn the pattern do well; students who memorise system by system do not.

The systems, in the order UWF names them. Endocrine — hormones as the slow chemical control channel, and the axes that regulate growth, metabolism, stress and reproduction. Cardiovascular — the cardiac cycle, the conduction system and the ECG, haemodynamics, and ⚠ the baroreceptor reflex, which is the cleanest example of a homeostatic loop in the body. Lymphatic and immune. Respiratory — mechanics of ventilation, gas exchange, the oxygen–haemoglobin dissociation curve, and ⚠ the fact that breathing is driven principally by carbon dioxide rather than by oxygen, which surprises nearly everyone. Digestive and metabolism. Urinary — ⚠⚠ the kidney, which is the hardest unit in the course and the most rewarding, since filtration, reabsorption and secretion are how the body actually regulates fluid, electrolytes and pH. Fluid, electrolyte and acid–base balance, which pulls the previous units together. Reproductive and development.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• ⚠ Explain homeostasis and analyse any regulatory system in terms of sensor, integrator, effector and feedback.
• Describe the structure and function of the endocrine system and the major hormones and their axes.
• Explain hormone action at the cellular level and the difference between steroid and peptide signalling.
• Describe the anatomy of the heart and explain the cardiac cycle and the conduction system.
• Interpret a basic electrocardiogram and relate its components to cardiac events.
• Explain cardiac output and its determinants, and the factors regulating blood pressure.
• ⚠ Explain the baroreceptor reflex and trace the response to a change in blood pressure.
• Describe the vascular system, capillary exchange and the forces governing it.
• Describe the composition and functions of blood, including haemostasis.
• Describe the lymphatic system and explain innate and adaptive immunity.
• Explain the mechanics of ventilation and the factors affecting airflow and compliance.
• Explain gas exchange and transport, including the oxygen–haemoglobin dissociation curve and its shifts.
• ⚠ Explain the control of respiration and the role of carbon dioxide and pH.
• Describe the digestive system, its secretions, motility and absorption.
• Explain metabolism — the fate of carbohydrate, fat and protein, and the absorptive and post-absorptive states.
• Describe the urinary system and the nephron.
• ⚠⚠ Explain glomerular filtration, tubular reabsorption and secretion, and how urine is concentrated.
• Explain the regulation of fluid and electrolyte balance.
• Explain acid–base balance and the respiratory and renal compensations for acidosis and alkalosis.
• Describe the reproductive systems and their hormonal regulation.
• Explain development from fertilisation through birth in outline.
• ⚠ Predict the consequences of a disruption to a regulatory system, and relate physiology to clinical presentation.

Laboratory outcomes

• Identify anatomical structures on models, slides, and where used, cadaveric or prosected material.
• Perform and interpret physiological measurements — blood pressure, pulse, spirometry, ECG.
• Conduct laboratory exercises safely and follow protocol accurately.
• Collect, record and analyse physiological data, including its variability.
• Relate laboratory observations to lecture concepts.
• Write a laboratory report with method, results and interpretation.

Optional Outcomes

• Explain exercise physiology responses across systems.
• Explain pathophysiology of common conditions in each system.
• Explain pharmacological intervention points in a regulatory pathway.
• Explain ageing changes across systems.
• Use simulation software to model physiological responses.
• Explain clinical laboratory values and their physiological meaning.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Homeostasis and feedback control.
• Endocrine system and hormone action.
• Blood and haemostasis.
• Heart — anatomy, cardiac cycle, ECG.
• Circulation and blood pressure regulation.
• Lymphatic system and immunity.
• Respiratory mechanics and gas exchange.
• Control of respiration.
• Digestive system.
• Metabolism and energy balance.
• Urinary system and renal physiology.
• Fluid, electrolyte and acid–base balance.
• Reproductive systems.
• Development.
• Laboratory technique and measurement.

Optional Topics

• Exercise responses.
• Pathophysiology by system.
• Pharmacology touchpoints.
• Ageing.
• Clinical laboratory interpretation.
• Physiological simulation.

Resources & Tools

• Textbooks: Marieb and Hoehn, Human Anatomy & Physiology — ⚠ the most widely adopted A&P text in the United States; Tortora and Derrickson, Principles of Anatomy and Physiology; Saladin; Silverthorn, Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach — ⚠ the best of them at explaining WHY rather than cataloguing what, and worth reading alongside whichever is assigned.
• ⚠⚠ Free and genuinely sufficient: OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology — free, peer-reviewed, comprehensive, and used as the primary text at a growing number of institutions. If cost is a barrier, this is a real alternative rather than a compromise.
• Study tools that work for this course specifically: ⚠ this is a high-volume memorisation course layered on conceptual mechanisms, and the two need different methods. Anki or another spaced-repetition system for structures and terms, started in week one; drawing the pathway from memory for mechanisms — the single most effective technique for the kidney and the cardiac cycle.
• Visual and interactive: Visible Body and Complete Anatomy (subscription, frequently licensed by institutions); Kenhub; ⚠ free and excellent: Ninja Nerd and Armando Hasudungan video explanations, which large numbers of A&P and nursing students rely on; the Khan Academy health and medicine unit; PhysioEx and Labster for virtual laboratory work.
• Laboratory equipment you will use: sphygmomanometers, stethoscopes, spirometers, ECG units, microscopes, models and torsos, and — where the institution has them — prosected cadaveric specimens. ⚠ Data acquisition systems (Biopac, iWorx) are common and are worth learning; they appear again in exercise physiology.
• ⚠ For health-professions planning: keep the syllabus and the laboratory manual. Programmes that question a prefix will ask for the syllabus, and having it saves weeks.

Career Pathways

⚠⚠ This course is a gateway rather than a destination, and it is one of the most consequential gateways in Florida higher education — it appears on the prerequisite list of nearly every health-professions programme in the state, and the grade in it is used to rank competitive applicants.

• Registered nurses (SOC 29-1141) — ⚠ A&P I and II with laboratories are near-universal prerequisites for Florida nursing programmes, and admission is competitive on the science GPA. Licensure requires graduating from an approved programme and passing the NCLEX-RN.
• Physical therapists (SOC 29-1123) and occupational therapists (SOC 29-1122) — require accredited doctoral or master's programmes.
• Physician assistants (SOC 29-1071) — ⚠ highly competitive, with specific prerequisite lists.
• Physicians and dentists (SOC 29-1210s, 29-1021) — ⚠ note that medical and dental schools generally require the majors biology and chemistry sequences rather than applied A&P; check the specific requirements before substituting.
• Respiratory therapists (SOC 29-1126), radiologic technologists (SOC 29-2034), dental hygienists (SOC 29-1292), diagnostic medical sonographers (SOC 29-2032) — ⚠ all Florida programmes with A&P prerequisites and competitive admission.
• Exercise physiologists and athletic trainers (SOC 29-1128, 29-9091) — ⚠ athletic training now requires an accredited master's.
• Paramedics (SOC 29-2042) and surgical technologists (SOC 29-2055).
• Clinical laboratory scientists (SOC 29-2011) — ⚠ requires a NAACLS-accredited programme.
• Kinesiology and health science graduates generally (SOC 29-1128, 21-1091).

⚠⚠ The structural warning this repository documents repeatedly applies here in its sharpest form: in every one of these fields, ELIGIBILITY DEPENDS ON COMPLETING AN ACCREDITED OR APPROVED PROGRAMME, not on accumulating the right courses. This course gets you considered; it does not get you licensed.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ The prefix question — resolve it before you enrol, not after

Repeated because it is the most expensive mistake available in this part of the curriculum.

• Two sequences teach this material in Florida: ⚠ BSC2085C/BSC2086C (or BSC1085/BSC1086) and APK2100C/APK2105C.
• ⚠⚠ Most Florida College System institutions teach the BSC sequence, and most health-programme prerequisite lists name BSC numbers.
• UWF's own catalog demonstrates the equivalence — it accepts BSC 1085/L in place of APK 2100C — ⚠ but that is UWF accepting an incoming course, which is a different question from a nursing programme accepting APK on an application.
• ⚠ The practical steps: get the target programme's published prerequisite list; if it names a prefix you do not have, email the programme's admissions contact and ask in writing; save the reply; and keep your syllabus.
• Do this before the sequence, not after — ⚠ because the fix, if the answer is no, is taking two more semesters of a course you have already taken.

⚠⚠ Register for the laboratory

At UWF, APK 2105L is a separate co-requisite registration. ⚠ Health-professions prerequisites almost always specify A&P with laboratory — a lecture-only transcript line does not satisfy them. Enrol in both, and confirm both appear on your record.

⚠ Prerequisites

UWF requires APK 2100C OR BSC 1085/L OR APK 2100/L — the first half of the sequence, in any of its forms.

• ⚠ You cannot take this course first. The sequence is genuinely sequential: this half assumes cell physiology, membrane transport, tissue types and the nervous system from part one.
• Unlisted but assumed: ⚠ general chemistry. Acid–base balance, gas transport and hormone action are chemistry, and students who skipped or forgot it find those units disproportionately hard.
• Also useful: any prior biology, and comfort with graphs and simple ratios.

Course format and workload

3 credits, 60 contact hours in the integrated C form. In the split form, 3 credits lecture plus a separately enrolled laboratory — ⚠ check the total credit count, since it typically comes to 4.

⚠⚠ Budget 10–14 hours per week. This is widely regarded as one of the hardest courses in a pre-health curriculum, and the reason is volume rather than difficulty of any single idea. Falling two weeks behind in A&P II is very hard to recover from, because each system builds on the last.

Assessment typically includes several lecture examinations, ⚠ laboratory practicals — timed identification stations, which are a distinct skill and require practising in the laboratory rather than from a book — quizzes, and laboratory reports.

⚠ Where students struggle, and what actually works

• ⚠⚠ Memorising instead of understanding the mechanism. The systems in this half are regulatory, and exam questions ask you to predict what happens when something changes. "What are the parts of the nephron" is answerable by memorisation; "what happens to urine output if blood pressure falls" is not.
• ⚠⚠ The kidney. Reliably the hardest unit. The technique that works is drawing the nephron from memory and tracing the filtrate through it, labelling what moves where and why, until it is automatic.
• Acid–base balance, because it integrates respiratory and renal physiology with chemistry. ⚠ Work through compensation scenarios systematically rather than trying to intuit them.
• The endocrine system's volume — many hormones, sources, targets and effects. Spaced repetition, from week one.
• Laboratory practicals. ⚠ Recognising a structure on a model under time pressure is a different skill from naming it in a textbook — go to the open laboratory sessions.
• Falling behind. ⚠ The single most common cause of failure, and the most preventable.

⚠ Laboratory safety and cadaveric material

• Standard laboratory rules apply: closed-toe shoes, eye protection where indicated, no food or drink, and care with sharps and glassware.
• Where human specimens are used, ⚠ institutions have specific rules: no photography, respectful conduct, and confidentiality about donors. These are conditions of the anatomical donation programmes that supply the material, and violating them has consequences for the institution as well as the student.
• ⚠ Students sometimes find cadaveric material distressing, and that is normal. Instructors expect it; tell them rather than avoiding the laboratory.
• Where students measure each other — blood pressure, spirometry, ECG — ⚠ participation is voluntary, results are not medical advice, and an unexpected reading should be followed up with a clinician rather than dismissed or panicked over.

Articulation and transfer

⚠⚠ This course has two transfer problems at once, which is unusual.

1. The prefix — BSC versus APK, discussed above, and by far the more consequential.
2. The suffix and credit count — APK2105C (integrated, 3 credits) versus APK2105 + APK2105L (split, typically 4). ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross the suffix automatically, and health programmes count credits as well as courses.

Keep the syllabus and the laboratory manual. ⚠ Both problems are resolved by documentation, and both are far easier to resolve in advance than in an appeal.

Prefix note. APK is applied kinesiology; BSC general biological science; PCB process biology; ZOO zoology; HSC health science; MCB microbiology. ⚠⚠ Anatomy and physiology is the clearest and most damaging case of prefix divergence in the Florida system, precisely because it is a lower-division course feeding competitive professional admission — the student meets it before transfer, with the least advising support, and a mismatch can invalidate an application rather than merely delay an audit.

AI Integration

Where AI assistance genuinely helps in this course:

• ⚠ Explaining a mechanism a second way. The countercurrent multiplier, the oxygen–haemoglobin curve's shifts, and renal compensation for acidosis are exactly the concepts where an alternative explanation frequently lands.
• Generating practice questions and self-testing — ⚠ a well-evidenced study technique, and one of the best uses in a memorisation-heavy course.
• Building flashcard decks, verified against the textbook.
• Working through "what happens if" scenarios as practice — ⚠ and then checking the reasoning yourself, because that reasoning is what the exam tests.

⚠⚠ Where it fails, and in a pre-health course the stakes are higher than a grade:

• ⚠⚠ Confidently wrong physiological detail. Normal values, hormone effects, pathway directions and reflex responses are stated fluently and are sometimes reversed. In a subject where you will later be responsible for a patient, learning a mechanism backwards is worse than not learning it. Verify against the textbook.
• Fabricated laboratory values and clinical correlations. ⚠ Reference ranges vary by laboratory and are checkable; do not take them from a model.
• Medical advice. ⚠⚠ Do not use a model to interpret your own or anyone else's measurements, symptoms or laboratory results.
• Substituting for the practical. A model cannot help you recognise a structure on a model under time pressure.
• ⚠⚠ The deeper cost, and it is specific to this course. A&P is prerequisite knowledge — it is not assessed once and discarded. It is assumed by pathophysiology, pharmacology, nursing practice, exercise physiology and every clinical course after it, and a student who generated their way through it meets the gap in a clinical course where the consequence is patient care rather than a grade.

AI as subject matter, briefly. ⚠ Clinical decision support, diagnostic imaging analysis and physiological monitoring are all real applications students will meet in practice — and every one of them requires a clinician who understands the physiology well enough to recognise when the output is wrong. That is a reason to learn this material properly rather than a reason not to.

Academic integrity. Follow the course policy. Submitting generated work as your own violates every Florida institution's policy — ⚠ and health-professions programmes conduct character reviews in which academic integrity findings are disclosed, examined and frequently disqualifying.