monomer help (1 Viewer)

[dawma88]

hey, imm stuck on evry monomer question, for example ''draw the monomer that forms each of the folowin addition/condensation polymers"

i know i havent given any pics, but could any one atleast give me some pointers to deal with these types of questions!!!!!

thanx alot...........(nerdz)

 

[Trefoil]

Not a good idea to call somebody you want help from a nerd.

Anyway, a monomer is a single unit of a polymer. A polymer is a bunch of monomer units connected.

So, if you had ethene: CH₂=CH₂, the polymer it would form is
-[CH₂-CH₂]-_n
Where n is the amount of monomer units making the polymer.

The double bond has been broken because this is addition polyermisation - instead of adding 2 more carbon and breaking the double bond we have added to more 'ethene' with their own single bonds. This polymer is called poly-ethene.

Here is a picture of three monomer units together:
- CH₂-CH₂ - CH₂-CH₂ - CH₂-CH₂ -

This is a section of polymer chain of length 3. Obviously it would never exist by itself - polymers have hundreds to thousands of units.

The monomer itself though in this case is CH₂=CH₂ because since we are seperating the monomer we must account for the bonding.