We talked about what polymers are. We spent a fair amount of time talking about plastics.
Try this exercise. Look around you. Any plastics around you? Yeah, I thought so. Plastics define our modern society. Plastics make our modern way of life possible. Identify a few things that contain plastic. If plastics did not exist, what would those items be made of? Or, could they exist at all?
Think of music. Only in recent years has it become possible to store music without some sort of media. CD? Plastic. Compact cassette tape? Plastic. Records? Plastic. etc...
OK, so the point was to illustrate the importance of polymers in modern society
Then we headed off to lab.
In lab we made plexiglass (polymethyl methacrylate). In a doomed glass test tube, about 2 mL of methyl methacrylate is mixed with 6-8 drops of tert butylperoxybenzoate. The tube is stoppered and placed in a 55° C oven overnight. Once polymerization occurs, it's smashy smashy on the test tube to get the bullet-shaped plexiglass out.
Next, we made some nylon by layering a cyclohexane solution of adipoyl chloride on top of an aqueous solution of hexamethylenediamine. With a hooked wire, the nylon is pulled from the solution in a long strand. The strand is washed and dried.
Finally, the classic Elmer's glue, water and borax glop. Since the first two reactions require very careful lab technique due to the potentially dangerous nature of the reactants, it is nice to do something the students can literally get their hands on.
To end the day, we played a round of LMNTO. The winner won a 250 mL beaker (never used).
Tomorrow, we put their DNA (biopolymer) into a vial.
8 comments:
Your science camp sounds a lot cooler than anything sciency I did as a kid. And by sciency I mean try to make pH paper from the chemistry set my parents bought me in the fifth grade.
Sadly, even back then Chemistry kits were starting to become really, really lame. I had a Chemistry/Biology kit when I was young. It was cool, but very limited.
Science camp sounds like fun. I'd love to do something like that around here...
Unfortunately, actually in those read here days Biochemistry packages had been beginning to turn out to be truly, truly worthless. I'd the Chemistry/Biology package after i had been youthful. It had been awesome, however limited.
A person's scientific research stay noises considerably chiller as compared with nearly anything visit the website science I did so for a children. Plus by way of science Get real aim to generate pH newspaper with the chemical make up placed this dad and mom got people while in the junior high score.
Your methodical exploration be industrial noise drastically refrigerator as compared having just about whatever i will follow the link scientific discipline Used to do and so for just a little ones.
Excellent post. These kinda posts are very necessary for the students and students must visit this page to get better ideas. Chemistry is always challenging topic so i hope i can have here better ideas.
Students get involve deeply in such practices. Science subject require camps and they can click here in more ideas about such ways.
Post a Comment