Polymers can be natural or man-made, but they are all big molecules made up of smaller units linked together.
Polymer (noun, “PAH-leh-mur”)
This word describes large molecules formed from smaller units. Those units are joined by chemical bonds.
Polymers show up everywhere. Plastics are polymers. That includes the hard plastic of water bottles and the plastic fibers that are woven into clothing. Many of these polymers don’t occur in nature. Instead, they are made with chemical reactions in a lab or factory.
Explainer: What are polymers?
Many other polymers occur naturally. These include ones inside our bodies, such as DNA and many proteins. The cell walls of plants contain the polymer cellulose (SELL-you-LOHSE). That polymer is made of molecules of sugar joined together.
The building blocks that make up polymers are called monomers (MAH-nuh-murs). Thousands or even tens of thousands of monomers connect to form a polymer. In some polymers, all the monomers look the same. Other polymers combine several types of monomers. Each has a different arrangement and set of atoms.
Those atoms and the way they are arranged affect a polymer’s properties, such as its hardness or melting temperature. So can the number of monomers. The way monomers are connected matters, too. Lab-made polymers often string together monomers that repeat over and over. The way these units are connected can change the polymer’s structure. Those structures, such as a long chain or something more like a web, give polymers different properties.
In a sentence
With a polymer that conducts electricity, these sunglasses go from light to dark in a flash.
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