British Sign Language Glossaries of Curriculum Terms

BSL Chemistry Glossary - polymer - Definition

There are a number of things we need to know to enable us to understand Polymerisation. Polymerisation occurs when Monomers join together in a chemical reaction to form long chains - you can see this process represented on the screen. These chains can be things like Starch, proteins, plastics and fibres.

On the left hand side of the screen we have Monomers - small molecules which join together to create Polymers. Monomers react with one another to create a Polymer.

On the screen here we have three Monomers - let me explain to you how these join together and how 'Addition Polymerisation occurs.

Each of these three Monomers has a double bond at the centre. When we add a catalyst a chemical reaction takes place and these double bonds are broken (as you can now see on the screen).

These molecules are now free to join with other molecules to create these chains which, as you can see, still have the same number of Carbon atoms in them (6) but now they are all joined by a single bond. The name of the Monomer at the top of the screen is Ethene which will form the Polymer, Polyethene.

If we had started this process off with the Monomer Propene, this would result in the formation of Polypropene. We can identify the original Monomer by looking at what comes after 'Poly' in the name, which in this example was Ethene.