What is a "polymer", and how do they work?

What is a "polymer", and how do they work?

Professor Gizmo (Amazing Science Presentations) gives expert video advice on: How do we make sounds that are both high and low?; How do my eyes play tricks on me?; What is the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas? and more...

Polymers are a fun aspect of chemistry. Poly means "many" and mer is a part. So polymers are made up of many, many parts. When you mix polymers together, parts hook together and form long chains of chemicals. The long chains of chemicals change the make up of the substance. Now, what we have today is a polymer that is a white powder and we're gonna mix it with water. What I'll have to do first is pour the polymer into a cup. Then we're going to take water, and pour water into this cup to mix water with the polymer. Then we're going to tip it upside down, and we should have snow and ice. So this polymer actually has taken all of that water that was in that cup and combined it within itself to form this powder. This is used for imitation snow. In fact, you can buy this at stores. The only trouble with this is that it has a lot of water in it, and if you let it sit too long it might start to get moldy. Now, the other aspect of this is you can find a powder very similar to this in diapers. Inside the diaper they use this polymer so that when the baby wets, the polymer absorbs all the moisture. When you take the diaper off, you're dealing with a heavy diaper, not a wet diaper. So the plymer has very practical uses. They used to use these polymers to coat seeds. So when you put the seed in the ground, the polymers attract the water. Water goes around the seed, and it makes the seeds grow a lot easier.