What makes polymers

October 13, at am. Polymers are everywhere. Just look around. Your plastic water bottle. The nylon and polyester in your jacket or sneakers. The rubber in the tires on the family car. Now take a look in the mirror. Many proteins in your body are polymers, too. Consider keratin KAIR-uh-tin , the stuff your hair and nails are made from.

Even the DNA in your cells is a polymer. By definition, polymers are large molecules made by bonding chemically linking a series of building blocks. Think of a polymer as a chain, with each of its links a monomer. Those monomers can be simple — just an atom or two or three — or they might be complicated ring-shaped structures containing a dozen or more atoms.

But in proteins, DNA and other natural polymers, links in the chain often differ from their neighbors. In some cases, polymers form branching networks rather than single chains. Regardless of their shape, the molecules are very big. Polymers are both man-made and naturally occurring.

Rubber, for example, is a natural polymeric material that has been used for thousands of years. It has excellent elastic qualities, the result of a molecular polymer chain created by mother nature. Another natural polymer is shellac, a resin produced by the lac bug in India and Thailand, which is used as a paint primer, sealant, and varnish.

The most common natural polymer on Earth is cellulose, an organic compound found in the cell walls of plants. It is used to produce paper products, textiles, and other materials such as cellophane. Man-made or synthetic polymers include materials such as polyethylene, the most common plastic in the world found in items ranging from shopping bags to storage containers, and polystyrene, the material used to make packing peanuts and disposable cups.

Some synthetic polymers are pliable thermoplastics , while others are permanently rigid thermosets. Still others have rubber-like properties elastomers or resemble plant or animal fibers synthetic fibers. These materials are found in all sorts of products, from swimsuits to cooking pans.

Depending on the desired use, polymers can be fine-tuned to leverage certain advantageous properties. These include:. Polymerization is the process of creating synthetic polymers by combining small monomer molecules into chains held together by covalent bonds. The two major forms of polymerization are step-growth polymerization and chain-growth polymerization.

The main difference between them is that in chain growth polymerization, monomer molecules are added to the chain one molecule at a time.

In step-growth polymerization, multiple monomer molecules are bonded directly with one another. Water pipes. Strong, hard-wearing, chemically unreactive. Outer layer of electric wires. Electrical insulator, hard-wearing. Can be made into fibres, strong and flexible. Sports clothing.

When the chains stick together very strongly, it can be really tough to pull them apart. If the chains happen to be straight and stiff and all lined up next to each other, it can be REALLY hard to pull them apart. A great example is cellulose in wood. The chains lay next to each other, straight and sticky like strong magnets. That makes trees and lots of houses! Polymer Chains Move Slower than Molecules Time Scale of Motion Pretend that you're a kindergarten teacher at the park, and you have to take your class from the parking lot to the playground.

Now, the fastest way to get them there would be to yell, "Run to the playground, everybody!