Chemistry review: why the idea that massage breaks up adhesions in muscle tissue by breaking hydrogen bonds in muscle tissue simply makes no sense at all. In other words, this is why even proposing the idea makes us sound ridiculous to people who understand science, and why we shouldnt do it, because it harms us. Reason #1: Relative size Our hands are at human scale. The average male hand size is 189 mm (7.44 inches), and the average female hand is 172 mm (6.77 inches). We can express that as 10 ** -3 m (read as ten to the minus 3 meters). We can throw away the 189 and the 172, because were about to talk about numbers that are so big that theyll dwarf the difference between 189 and 172. 10 ** -3 m means 1 meter (roughly 3 feet), divided by 10 once, and then all but one of those resulting pieces is thrown away. The remaining one is divided in 10 again, and then all but one of those resulting pieces is thrown away. The remaining one is divided by 10 again. So we end up with a final piece that is only 1/1000 the size of the original meter. Were going to keep doing that process until we get from the size of a hand down to the size of a hydrogen bond. Lets use this visualization tool to see what it looks like. You can zoom in and out by clicking on the scroller. Center the scroller above the person, and you have human scale, with meters and inches. Slide the scroller left to represent each division by 10, and youll see that 10 ** -1 m is cup-scale. 10 ** -2 m is Rubiks-cube or bird-egg scale. Remember, were ignoring the other numbers, and just looking at the power of 10. 10 ** -3 m is rice-grain, sleet, or ant scale, as well as human-hand scale. Divide by 10 again (10 ** -4 m), and we get single salt-crystal or human-egg scale. Divide by 10 again (10 ** -5 m) and we get silt particle or pollen-grain scale. Were about to leave the Middle World--a term that refers to things that we are able to experience directly at our scale, without the help of instrumental assistance. 10 ** -6 m: Red blood cell or clay particle scale Now, we pretty much leave the Middle World. You can see as you scroll through the visualizations that the things that are appearing now are things we cant see directly, because theyre too small. Each division by 10 takes us one level smaller. Remember, each time we divide by 10, we throw 9 of those pieces away, and then divide the remaining 1 again. 10 ** -7 m: Largest known virus scale 10 ** -8 m: HIV particle scale 10 ** -9 m: Thickness of DNA scale 10 ** -10 m: Water molecule scale 10 ** -11 m: Hydrogen atom scale So, in order to get from the scale of our hands to the scale of hydrogen atoms--which is where hydrogen bonding occurs--we had to repeat our process 8 times to get from 10 ** -3 m to 10 ** -11 m. Thats quite a difference, isnt it? Lets go the other way, to see what the difference means. Well start again at 10 ** -3 m (human hand scale) and go up from there by sliding the scroller right. To scale up, well do the inverse, or opposite, of what we did to scale down. Where we divided by 10, this time, well multiply by 10. And where we threw most of our divided parts away, this time, well keep everything. We need to do this 8 times to match the 8 times we scaled down. 1st time: 10 ** -3 m * 10 = 10 * -2 m, which is Rubiks-cube or bird-egg scale, as we saw earlier. 2nd time: 10 ** -2 m * 10 = 10 * -1 m, which--as we saw earlier--is cup-scale. 3rd time: meters/inches, or human scale 4th time: 10 ** 1 m, oak tree, saguaro cactus, and Boeing 747 scale 5th time: 10 ** 2 m, redwood tree and Eiffel Tower scale 6th time: 10 ** 3 m, Sears Tower and Mount Everest scale 7th time: 10 ** 4 m, Marathon-course scale(26 miles) 8th time: 10 ** 5 m, small asteroid-sized scale, like Ceres (950 km, or about 600 miles in diameter) So, to visualize why this wont work, turn the problem around, and visualize that. To move a human hand with the precision required to break hydrogen bonds at the interatomic level is on exactly the same scale as moving a 600-mile-wide asteroid to separate two human fingers, without destroying everything between the asteroid and the fingers. When the problem is posed that way, is it easier to see why the proposal that were breaking hydrogen bonds with our fingers makes absolutely no sense? People who understand science understand this, and we need to, as well, if were going to try to work on the same team with them. Reason #2: Amount of energy required (See the first comment for the graph, as I cant link to the visualization tool, and include the graph at the same time.) Ok, in reason one, we saw why we couldnt do what is claimed about breaking hydrogen bonds with our hands, any more than we could separate two fingers non-destructively by moving a 600-mile-wide asteroid back and forth over them. Its impossible. But, just for a moment, lets pretend that we could, and explore what that would mean, in reality. The graph in the first comment shows boiling points. The red point at the bottom left shows where we would predict the boiling point of water to be, based on the properties and behavior of similar compounds. However, the lavender point at the top left shows where the boiling point of water is in reality. The discrepancy is due to hydrogen bonding. That means that the hydrogen bonds are so strong, that they prevent water from boiling at the predicted -100 degrees Celsius. Instead, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. That means that the hydrogen bonds that hold the molecules together are so very strong that in order to turn water from a liquid to a gas, you have to add about 200 degrees Celsius (about 400 degrees Fahrenheit) more heat energy than you would expect. This has two very profound implications for us. Number one, since were *not* boiling our clients flesh with our hands, were not breaking their hydrogen bonds. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Its literally impossible. Number two, if there were no hydrogen bonds--if water really boiled at about -100 degrees Celsius--we would not be here discussing this, since life could not exist. If there were no hydrogen bonds, then liquid water--which, of course, we need to stay alive--would only be available on the coldest, most remote, most life-inhospitable planets: ones that could not possibly support human life. The fact that hydrogen bonds are so strong that we are able to survive on Planet Earth means, right there, that we are not breaking them with our hands. I suggest, then, that we retire this proposed explanation immediately, because all it does is tell the rest of the world, loud and clear--including clients and potential healthcare colleagues--that we have no idea about how basic chemistry, physics, and biology work. It also broadcasts that--despite having no idea what were talking about--we talk about it anyway, and that fact does not serve an aspiring healthcare profession well at all. visual.ly/scale-universe?view=true
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 23:42:03 +0000
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