Nowadays, there exist multiple kinds of possible medication to take according to different diseases. Most of the medications need to be prescribed by doctors, but some medications such as painkillers are available over the counter and can be easily bought. One of the most common pain reliever that we are going to talk about is ibuprofen. This medicine comes from many different names such as Advil and Tylenol. Ibuprofen is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug and it works by reducing hormones that cause pain and inflammation to the body. Ibuprofen is used to reduce fever and treat pain or inflammation caused by many conditions such as headache, toothache, back pain, arthritis, menstrual cramps, or minor injuries. Ibuprofen has its use as a pain reliever, but it also causes side effects and may possibly cause life-threatening heart or circulation problems such as heart attack or stroke. Our art project approaches this specific drug focusing on its structure and synthesis. [4]
Our artwork is a painting that shows the synthesis of Ibuprofen and its usage for certain types of pain. Ibuprofen synthesizes in six steps and we represented those steps with arrows and the molecules with different particular types of colors. It started all from a simple benzene ring and it was represented with a purple color. The other molecules branched with benzene has their own color. Finally, the Ibuprofen is formed and each color part of the molecules represent the steps from which it was synthesized. There are two possible enantiomers of ibuprofen, the S and R. Our artwork portrays the following big ideas of Atkins: matter is made of atoms, chemical bond form when electrons pair, molecular shape is a crucial feature and finally, there are barriers to reactions.
First, matter is made of atoms; as clearly seen from the painting, ibuprofen is formed from the synthesis of benzene. Ibuprofen (C13H18O2) is made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. [1] Then, chemicals bonds form only if there are electron pairs that can attack protons or leaving groups. The synthesis of ibuprofen includes four different reactions that form new chemical bonds, which are acylation, halogenation, hydration and carbonylation. Most of these routes to Ibuprofen begin with isobutylbenzene and use a major reaction, which is Friedel-Crafts acylation. Friedel Crafts acylation occurs by that an electron pair in the benzene ring clings to carbocation on the electrophile, therefore, it forms a new bond with a benzene ring. [2] Next, that molecular shape is crucial feature in chemistry is also related to the structure of ibuprofen product. This particular idea is presented with the two R-S enantiomers of ibuprofen. They each contains a chiral carbon and has its own molecular shape. They form a racemic mixture. They both have different effects and metabolism within the body. [4] Lastly, there are barriers to reactions. Reactions with low activation barriers can proceed more quickly than ones with higher activation barriers. These are related to the activation energy of ibuprofen because there were used two catalysts in the synthesis which work in reducing the activation energy. [3] One of the catalysts represented is Raney nickel. They are the four main Atkins’s big ideas showed in our artwork.
Although these are just four main ideas presented from our artwork out of nine from the list of Atkin’s big ideas, the composition of the drug ibuprofen and its relation to chemistry are expandable. We chose to present the synthesis of ibuprofen because the synthesis of ibuprofen generally embraces the topics of our organic chemistry class. In addition, our artwork particularly focuses on its mechanism and attempted to show each molecules and atoms somehow in friendly ways since we thought the mechanism of organic chemistry is the hardest part and actually the process to obtain a molecule is mostly all about the organic chemistry.
Works Cited:
1. Wikipedia. “Ibuprofen”. link. (12-06-14).
2. Ausetute.com. “Ibuprofen”. link. (12-06-14).
3. Chemistry Explained, “Catalysis and Catalysts”. link. (12-06-14).
4. Drugs.com. “Ibuprofen”. link. (12-06-14).