Polymers are ubiquitous in everyday life.  However, the chemistry that underlies these materials is not always presented in undergraduate or high school chemistry classes.  This in part reflects the mistaken belief that the concepts that underlie polymer chemistry are too complicated or too advanced for introductory classes.  While polymer chemistry principles and concepts can be complicated, they like complicated concepts in organic, inorganic, or physical chemistry, can still be part of any introductory class.  Indeed, polymers and demonstrations using polymers can sometimes be more useful as examples.  For example, polymers as macromolecules often have behavior that can be ascribed to entropy effects.  This can include entropy effects in polymer synthesis or entropy effects that lead to seemingly novel properties of polymers.  Likewise polymers have structural and stereochemical features which have analogies in common life and these analogies can be used to illustrate how molecules behave and the physical basis for chemical transformations.  These and other ways polymer chemistry and the features of polymers can be used to teach chemical concepts in college and some high school courses will be discussed.<br/>

Using polymer properties to illustrate and explain concepts in introductory chemistry

249th National Meeting (2015)

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