An Easy Lab Exercise to Teach Fickian Diffusion, Mathematical Modeling, and Drug Delivery

摘要

This lab can be used to teach important concepts in drug delivery, including Fickian diffusion and the role of polymer-drug interactions in determining the diffusion coefficient and release rate. In addition, students learn important skills such as the preparation and use of a standard curve, mathematical modeling, and simple statistics. We have each student write a conference-style abstract describing their results, and include a derivation of the Ritgers-Peppas equation from Fick's second law as an appendix. This real world application reinforces the calculus and differential equations they learned in earlier classes.