As I stared at the dentist’s hands during my way overdue dental checkup, I was thinking how two different procedures had pretty much the same steps, but end up with two entirely different results:
- We start of with the scaling of the teeth, which I think is equivalent to the gross chipping away of gunk and stuff from the metal surface that is being prepared for painting. And believe me, on an old oil platform, gunk accumulates.
- The next set is the polishing of teeth, which I would liken to brushing a surface with a powered metal brush to remove existing paint and corrosion from the surface to be painted. The difference is that polishing leaves a smooth surface, whereas the brush leaves a rough one.
- The last set, and a new one for me, was air polishing of my teeth, which utilizes a non contact jet of tiny sodium bicarbonate particles and distilled water lifting stains from tooth surfaces. I would say that this is similar to the blasting of a surface to remove the big irregularities and provide a better surface for the paint to grip. And air polishing feels weird on the tongue, believe me.
Again, the difference is that one procedure ends with a surface which is smooth, and one ends with a surface that is rough.
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 
you got your old dentist or a new ones. Unless your old dentist decides to give up his politics, that’s going to be a long shot.