Help needed with Polymers by Janurary 4

[smartboy123]

Hi, my name is Nicky and I am doing a science fair at All Saints School.
I have a series of questions related to my project.
If someone could answer them soon I would really apreciate it alot.

1. When did you first become learn about polymers?

2.Could you please tell me what interested you about polymers?

3.What are some of the most important things you learned about polymers?

4.Why do you think polymers are important, useful, or interesting?

5.What pratical applications have you found for polymers?

6.Do you enjoy working with polymers?

7. Is it hard making polymer?

Once again I would really appreciate it if someone would answer this as soon as you can

thanks,
Nicky

Oh yeah i almost forgot I will need you to sign this form below

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My name is Nicky. I am a student at All Saints Catholic School and am conducting research for a Science Fair Project. May I please have your permission to include your name and factual parts of our discussion related to science in my report? If you give your permission, please sign the form below.

____________________________ _____________________
Person Interviewed Date






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again thank you:>)

Nicky

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

1. When did you first become learn about polymers?

Graduate school materials science mostly. Like everyone I encountered plastics in my life before that but did not know why they behaved differently from other materials.

2.Could you please tell me what interested you about polymers?

They behave very differently from most other materials while being chemically very similar.

They're just carbon/hydrogen chains - what distinguishes most from each other is the length of the
chain and impurities caught between the chains.

3.What are some of the most important things you learned about polymers?

You can separate out different kinds of plastics because they melt at different temperatures, which can be pretty
important for recycling. They don't really have a crystal structure, they're just long strings of molecules tangled
together. Wax is a very short chained one....longer chains tend to be harder and more brittle. Colored plastic
is the same as uncolored plastic except for impurities. (this is also mostly true of dyed cloth fibers).

4.Why do you think polymers are important, useful, or interesting?

They have fundimentally different structural properties from most other materials (metals, stonework, wood) and
the reason can be traced to their atomic structure. With relatively low melting points and being relatively soft, they
are cheap to manufacture and easier to recycle. By just varying the polymer chain you can make it transparent,
crackly, sticky (plastic wrap), sturdy, opaque, resistant to being dissolved by chemicals, many things.

5.What pratical applications have you found for polymers?

Sitting at my desk, about half of the objects on it, including computer, telephone, water bottle, marking pens and
even awards are made of polymers. They're everywhere.

[smartboy123]

Um thanks Mr. Bradley, But you haven"t answered My last two questions
If you could pease do that i would really like it. And could also please sign the form. It turns out the answers aren't due untill Janurary 8.


-Thanks
Smartboy123

[deleted-139256]

Perhaps if you clarified your last two questions I might be able to make a response. Are you referring to making and working with polymers in the research context, such as conducting experiments with them? If so I don't have any direct experience in the field, it's also possible that not many experts on this forum have really synthesized polymers since it a focused area of research. I would assume since the area isn't very broad you would like working with polymers if you chose to. In addition synthesizing polymers is relatively complicated(see link) It's not something you would encounter till organic chem in college I would think.Polymers are a very interesting topic to research though and just as bradley mentioned they are EVERYWHERE.Here's a link which might help u learn more about them:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer.

phi-unit

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

We can't sign things physically here, and it is against board policy to give out real addresses.

This is not really a very good forum for surveys. It's intended more as a question/answer format.

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

I did not respond to questions 6 and 7 because even when I was studying Polymers in graduate school, I did no actual reasearch on them. I've never fabricated them from scratch, for example, and my career took me in other directions than materials science.