12.01.2016
Written By: Hannah Seo
Today we explored the wonderful world of polymer science! We started off by illustrating how ubiquitous polymers are in everyday life by watching a quick video of the University of Minnesota men’s basketball team doing the “Mannequin Challenge.” Our challenge to the students was to count how many items made of polymers they could spot in the video. It was nearly impossible to keep track as almost everything shown in the video were made of either synthetic or natural polymers!
We delved into what polymers actually are and what makes them so unique. In particular, we examined the property of viscoelasticity with Silly Putty. Viscoelastic materials can act both like a liquid and a solid, and Silly Putty exhibits this behavior because the main component in Silly Putty is poly(dimethylsiloxane), a polymer capable of viscoelastic behavior.
Finally, we studied the physics of polymer solutions by experimenting with swelling of sodium polyacrylate, a super absorbent polymer found in diapers. The research question for this experiment was: how do different solutes affect the absorbency of sodium polyacrylate? After forming hypotheses, the students prepared 3 different solutions (tap water, salt water, and sugar water) and measured how much of each solution diapers could absorb. Some students also tried different concentrations of salt and sugar to see how concentration of solutes affects absorbency. The students were surprised to see how much solution diapers could hold and seemed to have fun learning about polymers!