Polymers and monomers

[roseeblosssom]

How would you be able to find the mass of a polymer made from a certain amount of mol of monomers?
Just say Glucose was the monomer, how would you find the mass of a polymer from say, 10 mol of glucose monomers?

[jgoudie]

You need to know what type of polymer it is and what is given off when two monomers come together.

Your example:  glucose.  When two glucose monomers come together one water is given off (condensational polymerisation). this means:
2 glucose : 1 water given off
3 glucose : 2 water given off
4 glucose : 3 water given off
n glucose : n-1 water given off

Thus if 10 mol of glucose were used to make a polymer, 9 mol of water would be given off.
Thus your mass would be 10*180 = 1800grams.  minus the 9mol of water 9*18=162.  This makes 1638grams.

The idea is that you know what is given off, if anything through your polymerisation.  Additional polymerisation (ie. between alkenes) has nothing given off, thus the mass of the polymer is simply the mass of all the monomers.  Most of the time your will deal with condensation polymerisation (hence the n-1 waters)

Hope this makes sense.

How would you be able to find the mass of a polymer made from a certain amount of mol of monomers?
Just say Glucose was the monomer, how would you find the mass of a polymer from say, 10 mol of glucose monomers?

[roseeblosssom]

Thank you so much!