On the 18th, I helped my work place - the University of Wolverhampton, host an Aspire event, Aspire to HE Experience Day. Aspire is a partnership of courses which is led by the University of Wolverhampton and funded by the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP). The main aim is to increase/encourage students from a less advantaged backgrounds to head into university/ higher education (HE).
My role in the Aspire to HE Experience Day was to escort and help manage the activity called From Chemistry to Medicine - How to Make a Tablet. This activity was a fun quick experiment of making Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) tablets which showed the college students the basic principles of pharmaceutics. Those who are not aware themselves, pharmaceutics is the science that designs/manufactures medicinal products. I not just talking about your Paracetamol tablets, medicated mouthwash and creams count. Any product which has a drug which the consumer can made was probably designed by this process.
During this activity, the college students were given a weighed 0.5g of Riboflavin within a sealable plastic bag. They were asked to weigh out 5g of glucose before tipping that and 5g of another component into the bag containing the riboflavin. After sealing the bag, students then mixed the contents. A manual tablet press (Seen in the picture on the right) was then used to press the powder into a round disk shape which we all recognise as pills.
The students where then asked to test their pills which would happen in the real manufacturing process. The testing was checking the hardness and the friability of the pill. The hardness of a tablet is an important thing to check because if a tablet is too hard, then the tablet won't dissolve quick enough for the body to absorb. Similarly, if the tablet is too soft then the medication won't reach the right area of the anatomy before it dissolved. Soft tablets also have the greatest friability... Friability is basically how quickly a pill will disintegrate over time. So soft tablets will lose their shape the quickest due to the powder not being combined well. Sometimes they won't get to the person in one piece... Not a good thing for a tablet to do.
Would you have a tablet that's broken up in the box?
This activity was done on the third floor of the University's Rosalind Franklin Laboratories. I've been there many times as a biomedical science student. It's such a fascinating place from those who enjoy science. And... Another part to the activity was a cool tour of the third floor laboratories. The students got to go past the teaching labs and have a look at the facilities along with the impressive machines that the Rosalind Franklin Laboratories have. There were high-tech machine versions of the tasks we did along with liquid and gas chromatography equipment. Liquid and gas chromatography is used to test drug products too. We use them in biomedical science within the discipline to test things such as sugar in bloodily fluids. So it cool to see.
During this activity, it was fun to talk to the college students and get an idea of what they wanted to do. Obviously they had an interest within science - chemistry even! But, some had aspirations to do biomedical and medical courses. I answered their questions especially on biomedical science which was my previous degree. Though most questions were about the financial side of the university experience; how to apply for student finance and what happens after university in terms of paying that off... Which are reasonable questions for a last year college student to think. I know I was worrying about this when I was at their stage. Another common topic of questioning was about halls and social life, which is the best one or what did you do in your free time. One student even asked me about how to do a masters!
Which is great! It's awesome to see a college student even consider anything higher than the degree.
Author's Notes
If you want to see more of the machines mentioned in the post click on either of these link - My Instagram or the University of Wolverhampton's STEM Response Team Instagram
My role in the Aspire to HE Experience Day was to escort and help manage the activity called From Chemistry to Medicine - How to Make a Tablet. This activity was a fun quick experiment of making Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) tablets which showed the college students the basic principles of pharmaceutics. Those who are not aware themselves, pharmaceutics is the science that designs/manufactures medicinal products. I not just talking about your Paracetamol tablets, medicated mouthwash and creams count. Any product which has a drug which the consumer can made was probably designed by this process.
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The students where then asked to test their pills which would happen in the real manufacturing process. The testing was checking the hardness and the friability of the pill. The hardness of a tablet is an important thing to check because if a tablet is too hard, then the tablet won't dissolve quick enough for the body to absorb. Similarly, if the tablet is too soft then the medication won't reach the right area of the anatomy before it dissolved. Soft tablets also have the greatest friability... Friability is basically how quickly a pill will disintegrate over time. So soft tablets will lose their shape the quickest due to the powder not being combined well. Sometimes they won't get to the person in one piece... Not a good thing for a tablet to do.
Would you have a tablet that's broken up in the box?
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| A bigger tablet press |
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During this activity, it was fun to talk to the college students and get an idea of what they wanted to do. Obviously they had an interest within science - chemistry even! But, some had aspirations to do biomedical and medical courses. I answered their questions especially on biomedical science which was my previous degree. Though most questions were about the financial side of the university experience; how to apply for student finance and what happens after university in terms of paying that off... Which are reasonable questions for a last year college student to think. I know I was worrying about this when I was at their stage. Another common topic of questioning was about halls and social life, which is the best one or what did you do in your free time. One student even asked me about how to do a masters!
Which is great! It's awesome to see a college student even consider anything higher than the degree.
Author's Notes
If you want to see more of the machines mentioned in the post click on either of these link - My Instagram or the University of Wolverhampton's STEM Response Team Instagram
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