Saturday, 31 March 2012

Polymers

I figure I should give a good definition of polymers as well since I started talking about polymerization.

 A polymer is a large molecule composed of repeating structural units. These sub-units are typically connected by covalent chemical bonds.  Although the term polymer is sometimes taken to refer to plastics, it actually encompasses a large class of compounds comprising both natural and synthetic materials with a wide variety of properties.

Its good to notice that polymers exist naturally as well, such as silk, wool, and more importantly from a biologist's eyes, DNA.

Here are 4 polymer chains pictured below. seeing how tiny these polymers are can really say a lot about how small each individual molecule is. These are microscopic!


No comments:

Post a Comment