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Aspirin Tablets Help Unravel Basic Physics


hazelm

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"Different crystal structures and different rates of dissolution and absorption..."  I once read that if  a pill does not dissolve (being tested in water) within thirty seconds it is not going to dissolve fast enough to be of full benefit once swallowed.  So, rate of dissolving may be based on structure?

 

"the modes of vibration and electronic excitation will be different" - I'm going out on  a limb here but does the vibration and excitation aid in absorption?  Perhaps speed up dissolution?

Rate of dissolving can depend on crystal structure, yes. Structures of lower thermodynamic stability, for example, may have lower activation barriers to dissolving, thus leading to faster dissolution.

 

But there is no suggestion, so far as I can see, that this vibration/electronic coupling is playing a role in the kinetics of dissolving or absorption. It is merely a feature of one of the structures.  The authors of Ocean Breeze's reference are saying that the pharmaceutical industry is always in need of analytical techniques that can distinguish between different crystal forms. So it may be that this phenomenon is one more potential technique.

 

However your reference is I think a pure chemistry paper, i.e. a piece of research done simply out of scientific curiosity, not one aimed at a medical application as such. A lot of science is like this. The applications come along later.  

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Interesting to follow, though.   Somewhat like having a ringside seat while watching the action.  I think I made the point before but, for me, a lot of it is getting the vocabulary under control.  Knowing how the terms are being used.  Reading those papers is helping there. Then, of course, your comments on what is relevant to the topic and what is not.  Thanks again.  Carry on.

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Interesting to follow, though.   Somewhat like having a ringside seat while watching the action.  I think I made the point before but, for me, a lot of it is getting the vocabulary under control.  Knowing how the terms are being used.  Reading those papers is helping there. Then, of course, your comments on what is relevant to the topic and what is not.  Thanks again.  Carry on.

Yes it is true that science terminology is a challenge for those on the outside. While I have always believed strongly in the need for scientists to communicate as clearly and simply as they can (my tutor in physical chemistry used to correct poor spelling and grammar, just as if we were in English class and my mother was an English teacher), it is inevitable that a lot of technical terms have to be used.  But this has been a good thread with some challenging science in it, thanks to you.

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Yes it is true that science terminology is a challenge for those on the outside. While I have always believed strongly in the need for scientists to communicate as clearly and simply as they can (my tutor in physical chemistry used to correct poor spelling and grammar, just as if we were in English class and my mother was an English teacher), it is inevitable that a lot of technical terms have to be used.  But this has been a good thread with some challenging science in it, thanks to you.

 

You've probably heard the old saw about Eskimo's having a hundred different words for "snow." I think you'd find if you asked an Eskimo to describe the difference in meaning of each of those words, we'd *all* probably have a hard time following. Science is a lot like that: unless you've studied it, the purpose for having all these words that at first sound like they all "mean the same thing" is a mystery, but the more you learn the more you see why they exist.

 

In addition to good excuses for terms that make useful distinctions in describing complex phenomena, there's sometimes a tendency to come up with new terminology that doesn't add any useful information but obfuscates it to keep the knowledge in the priesthood. That's probably worse in Computer Science than anywhere else where for want of a single new feature, people feel the need to invent entirely new programming languages....and don't get me started about development methodologies....

 

 

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind, :phones:
Buffy
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The ones that slow me down are ones that I already know with totally different meanings.    As you say, it happens everywhere.  The last elementary school math books that I saw had come up with "input" for 'add' or 'plus'.  What was wrong with the words we already had?  As you said:  'don't get me started on....."  A whole other field.

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You've probably heard the old saw about Eskimo's having a hundred different words for "snow." I think you'd find if you asked an Eskimo to describe the difference in meaning of each of those words, we'd *all* probably have a hard time following. Science is a lot like that: unless you've studied it, the purpose for having all these words that at first sound like they all "mean the same thing" is a mystery, but the more you learn the more you see why they exist.

 

In addition to good excuses for terms that make useful distinctions in describing complex phenomena, there's sometimes a tendency to come up with new terminology that doesn't add any useful information but obfuscates it to keep the knowledge in the priesthood. That's probably worse in Computer Science than anywhere else where for want of a single new feature, people feel the need to invent entirely new programming languages....and don't get me started about development methodologies....

 

 

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind, :phones:
Buffy

 

Yes I know what you mean. What really annoys me is a poorly written academic paper, in which the writer has deliberately chosen long words to seem cleverer, instead of short ones for clarity, and has failed to break up his sentence construction so as to make the points he wants to make come out clearly. I am afraid you see this nowadays in many fields of academe, not just science. I have even seen English literature  papers that are hard to read - and are consequently dull and have no impact. My tutor, by contrast, whose own research was in very technical atmospheric photochemistry, was able to write with clarity: short sentences and simple words except where a technical term was required.

 

My own view on this is that it is generally it is the bad researchers that need to hide the poverty of their contributions behind a smokescreen of verbiage (and/or poorly explained mathematical symbols). But it has to be said that the pressure today to publish all the time does not help. I wish people took longer in the drafting and editing. 

Edited by exchemist
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