Articles Archive for July 2012

One of the most important parts of my job is aiding multinationals with transferring methods between sites. You may think that, with the SOP function present in Malvern’s products, saving methods and emailing them to the other sites guarantees easy method transfer. However this is not always the case as sometimes the ability to send the method electronically is forgotten about and paper instructions are not ideal. Often this leads to analysis conditions being subtly different between sites.
Sampling and dispersion are the key parts of a method that need to be …

So here goes my first attempt at writing a Blog! My name is Stephen Ball, and I recently joined Malvern Instruments as Product Marketing Manager. I have just been introduced to the concept of blogging, which is now one of my new responsibilities. All being well, you should see plenty more blogs from me in the future!
I thought I would start my first blog by talking about what I have learnt so far during my intensive induction at Malvern Instruments. Having been founded in the 1960s, Malvern Instruments has kept …

I would like to first of all introduce myself since this is the first time I have blogged on this site. My name is John Duffy and I am one of the Product Technical Specialists for Rheometry Products based at Malvern’s Headquarters in the UK.
Before joining Malvern I spent a number of years in industry working in Research and Development, first at Unilever Port Sunlight and then Boots in Nottingham. At the ripe old age of thirty I finally decided to risk financial ruin by doing a PhD at Nottingham …

When Malvern sells a Mastersizer, the sample introduction is pretty much a known entity….a powder, or a suspension. There isn’t much mess created, much discomfort during the measurement, or surprises.
Measuring sprays is a different world, as we must adapt the laser instrument to the customer’s spray. I had a true “slap in the face” example of this on a recent Spraytec demo, consisting of:
Houston, Texas…outdoors…sunny, 95F (35°C), and 60% humidity
Gulf mosquitoes that were very hungry
Wearing a nomex 1 piece jumpsuit, with hardhat and goggles
In the shadow of a chemical reactor …

I am regularly asked how long a measurement takes on one of our Zetasizer instruments. I get this question even more frequently when people are asking about our Zetasizer APS (auto plate sampler) dynamic light scattering instrument, which analyzes samples that have been prepared on either 96- or 384-well plates.
It is an intriguing question, and not one with a black and white or definitive answer.  Strangely, it often makes me wonder what the person is really asking.
Let me explain
When making light scattering measurements, there are numerous factors that come into …

For most of my adult life, I have dreamed of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, “The Roof of Africa”.  Now, finally, on Saturday July 14th 2012, I will begin a 7 day climb of the tallest free standing mountain and one of the world’s largest volcanos.
Joining me are 5 of my close friends, 1 of whom is my girlfriend.  They have apparently shared my vision of an unforgettable adventure and a particularly unnecessary risk to our personal health.  Each person in the group has done their fair share of training for the …

Everyone who knows me knows that my favorite place in the world is New York City.  “Liberty Enlightening the World” or The Statue of Liberty is my favorite landmark in NYC, well technically New York Harbor.  The statue is currently closed for renovation after celebrating its 125th anniversary in October 2011, but what does this have to do with particle properties?
Well the last time the statue was closed for renovation was in 1984.  As part of this, multiple layers of paint and coal tar needed removed from the inside of the …

If you’ve ever used a spell checker to review an article which includes the word ‘rheology’, then you might have come across a ‘theology’ connection, as that’s what you’re usually prompted to change the word to! But rheology really does have some theological connections, aside from being considered a misprint, and one in particular highlights the importance of understanding the timescale of deformation and the effect that has on a material’s rheological properties.
One of the founding fathers* of rheology, Markus Reiner proposed the Deborah Number – named after the prophetess …

How do you make the Lincoln Memorial, the Venus de Milo, The Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China disappear? 
Ask a pharmaceutical formulation scientist.
It is reported that around ninety percent of new chemical entities discovered by the pharmaceutical industry today are poorly soluble compounds, as are some 40% of drugs currently on the market. Rendering the drug formulations soluble has been described to me, by some pharmaceutical scientists, as “trying to dissolve the Lincoln Memorial” or the Venus de Milo, or Taj Mahal, or the Great Wall of …

Hi, Malcolm here. With another birthday just gone I thought it would be fun to find out if I share my important day with any famous people. I was amused to find that, aside from children’s author Beatrix Potter and Hugo Chavez (flamboyant President of Venezuela); the list was full of people I had never heard of.
American innovation
I did find one interesting person; Earl Silas Tupper, the American inventor of Tupperware. Does everyone have memories of Tupperware?  Or perhaps a Tupperware party, where your mum would let a woman you …