Aspirin Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Aspirin - Assignment Example Two Italians, Brugnatelli and Fontana, had in fact already obtained salicin in 1826, but in a highly impure form. By 1829, [French chemist] Henri Leroux had improved the extraction procedure to obtain about 30g from 1.5kg of bark. In 1838, Raffaele Piria [an Italian chemist] then working at the Sorbonne in Paris, split salicin into a sugar and an aromatic component (salicylaldehyde) and converted the latter, by hydrolysis and oxidation, to an acid of crystallized colorless needles, which he named salicylic acid (Bellis, 2012) Acetyl salicylic acid is the chemical name of Aspirin. In other words, Salicylic acid is the major content of Aspirin. Aspirin plays a vital role in the metabolism of humans and animals. This paper analyses the various aspects of aspirin such as chemical formula, systemic names, physical and chemical properties, relevance of its physical and chemical properties and precautions while taking aspirin etc. As mentioned earlier, Acetyl salicylic acid is the chemical name of Aspirin. C9H8O4 is the chemical formula of aspirin. The elaborated chemical formula of aspirin can be represented as CH3COOC6H4COOH. In other words, each aspirin molecule consists of 9 carbon atoms, 8 hydrogen atoms and 4 oxygen atoms. Structural formula of aspirin can be represented as follows. Physically, Aspirin is a solid substance. It is colorless, odorless, white, crystalline, acidic substance. Its melting point is 137 °C and boiling point is 140 °C. Moreover, it is soluble in water. As evident from the chemical structure, Aspirin is an aromatic compound with a ring structure. It can be converted into several different useful compounds because of its ring or aromatic structure. â€Å"Molecular Weight of aspirin is 180.15 g/mole and its Specific Gravity: 1.35 (Water = 1)† (Material Safety Data Sheet Acetylsalicylic acid MSDS, n.d., p.3).