Come celebrate polymers?the circus contortionist of the world of matter! December 10 on Science Sunday at the Austin Children's Museum, 201 Colorado. Sometimes it bends, sometimes it breaks, but there are many, many kinds of polymers that we use everyday. We'll explore the nature of several polymers, find polymers in our environment, mix up a fun polymer slime, and make "polyday" ornaments you can take home!
Polymers are big molecules made of chains of repeating units. These units are called monomers. When many monomers are hooked together, we call the long strings POLYmers, because POLY means MANY. Proteins, latex, and cellulose are polymers that occur naturally in the world, and many other polymers are made in laboratories and factories. Some polymers are very, very flexible. You can bend them in half and they will not break. Low density polyethylene, called LDPE, is used to make plastic bags. Other polymers are much harder. Polyethylene terephthalate, called PET, can be extremely hard. It is sometimes used in making lenses for eyeglasses. Polyacryamide is an unusual polymer used in making diapers because its long chains form little "pockets" where liquid can be stored. This activity program is brought to the Austin Children's Museum by the UT Austin branch of CLiPS, the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems, funded by the National Science Foundation through a grant to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. UT contact: Pam Cook,
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, (512)471-3704. For more information about CLiPS, please visit:
http://blog.case.edu/casenews/2006/07/25/case_western_reserve_university _awarded_multimilliondollar_science_and_techno logy_center_by_national_science_foundation.
(512) 472-2494 www.austinkids.org
