高分子化学专业外语.doc

PART A Polymer Chemistry ＆Physics UNIT 1 What are Polymers? What are polymers? For one thing, they are complex and giant molecules and are different from low molecular weight compounds like, say, common salt. To contrast the difference, the molecular weight of common salt is only 58. 5, while that of a polymer can be as high as several hundred thousands, even more than thousand thousands. These big molecules or macro-molecules are made up of much smaller molecules. The small molecules, which combine to form a big molecule, can be of one or more chemical compounds. To illustrate, imagine that a set of rings has the same size and is made of the same material, When these rings are interlinked, the chain formed can be considered as representing a polymer from molecules of the same compound. Alternatively, individual rings could be of different sizes and materials, and interlinked to represent a polymer from molecules of different compounds. This interlinking of many units has given, the polymer its name, poly meaning many and mer meaning part (in Greek) . As an example, a gaseous compound called butadiene ,with a molecular weight of 54, combines nearly 4 000 times and gives a polymer known as polybutadiene (a synthetic rubber) with about 200 000 molecular weight. The low molecular weight compounds from which the polymers form are known as monomers. The picture is simply as follows：.. butadiene+ butadiene+ … + butadiene→polybutadiene (4 000 times) One can thus see how a substance (monomer) with as small a molecular weight as 54 grows to become a giant molecule (polymer) of (54×4 000≈) 200 000 molecular weight. It is essentially the giantness of the size of the polymer molecule that makes its behavior different from that of a commonly known chemical compound such as benzene. ① Solid benzene, for instance, melts to become liquid benzene at 5.5℃ and, on further heating, boils into gaseous benzene. As against this well-defined behavior of a sim