1s November 2013: Natural Vs Complete denture occlusion

I decided to compare more specific dental restorations and the natural teeth. The first being dentures. 

One online powerpoint website was extremely helpful and introduced many new ideas and sub headings that were relevant to my EPQ. The information directly compared dentures (in particular their occlusal surface) and the natural occlusal surface of teeth. 

It included:

-non vertical forces 

-bilateral balance 

-Retention, Stability and support etc etc. 

my notes taken from the website (left)

A lot of theory on physics cropped up which was difficult to understand as the theories and equations were foreign to me. So I was thinking of asking a physics teacher in college to explain it in a simpler form. 

I further researched into the information from this website, so my research could be more detailed. Surprisingly I found some useful articles from the BDJ (British Dental Journal) which I struggled with earlier on, however once again the language used in these papers were difficult to understand. I also went on a mexican dental care website which gave similar information but this website also gave an equation known as Stefan's law. This law was pretty comprehensive and shows the force necessary to pull the plates apart (I think the plates are referring to the gum and the surface of the denture).

Most of these sources explained the physical mechanisms of complete denture retention (retention is the resistance of a denture to resist vertical movement away from the dentures). The factors involved in retention are covered in the sources which include surface tension, adhesion, cohesion, atmospheric pressure etc. These are factors I would like to further explore as it would give depth to my essay.