OVESET for Polymer Science Education

Module 1 Molecular Weight Distribution

What are the different ways to define average molecular weight? How to characterize the molecular weight distribution?

Module 2 Step Growth Polymerization

What is the probability to find a polymer with a certain chain length in a step-growth polymerization? What are the chain end functional groups of the polymers?

Module 3 Conventional Radical Polymerization

How fast would a radical polymerization proceed? How large the resulting polymers would be?

Module 4 Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization

How to choose proper reaction conditions to conduct ATRP? What would be the fraction of terminated chains?

Module 5 Radical Copolymerization

What sequence structures will you get from a radical copolymerization? Which monomer will be consumed faster?

Module 6 Network formation

When gelation happens what causes the dramatic change of the system? What are the sol and gel fractions?

Module 7 Single chain conformation

How to characterize the size of a polymer chain? How does the size change with increasing degree of polymerization?

Module 8 Self-avoid chains

Monomer units in a polymer chain cannot overlap in space. How does this factoer influence the size of the chain?

Module 9 Star and branched polymers

What do star and branched polymers look like? How do their radii of gyration change with the degree of polymerization?

Introduction

This is a series of Open Virtual Experiment Simulator Education Tools (OVESET) aims at improving inductive reasoning of undergraduate polymer science students. Polymer science education does not only require students to memorize concepts and principles but also requires students to analyze and problem-solve mathematical and logical relationships through inductive reasoning, such as analyzing the relationship between reaction conditions and properties of the resulting polymers and structure-property correlations. These topics involving inductive reasoning are the most challenging; however, current educational resources could not provide students sufficient training on these topics. This project addresses this gap in polymer science education by developing of OVESET and its ancillary materials. The ultimate goal is to improve polymer science instruction by providing the field with state-of-the-art, affordable (free and open) experiment simulators that are sustainable, effective, and easily adaptable (requiring only a web browser for users).

This series includes 9 modules which are: Concept of molecular weight distribution; Chain-growth polymerization kinetics; Conventional radical polymerization kinetics; Kinetics of atom transfer radical polymerization; Copolymerization statistics; Network formation; Single chain conformation; Self-avoid chians; Star and branched polymers.

Home page of OVESET:	Home page of Study Guide

Objectives

With the help of the simulation tools, understand the related concepts in polymer science.
Learn how to solve reasoning and mathmatical problems related to the simulations.

Features

Designed for easy in class practicing.

One link: Instructors and students do not need to install anything on their own computers. Nor do they need to perform any configuration before using the simulators. The simulators run online under Google Colaboratory environment which is a free online programming platform provided by Google. Users just need to click on a link and the simulator will be open in a webpage. Users are required to sign in with their own google accounts. Then simulations can be performed within the webpage and the results are shown in place.
One click: Users just need to select or type in the reaction conditions, then choose “Run all” under the tab “Runtime”. The simulations will be trigered and the results will be shown.
One minute: The simulations are fast, which usually take seconds to a few minutes to finish.

For advanced users, the source code can be downloaded from GitHub. Users can modify and redistribute the simulators for free.

Supporting materials

A study guide titled “Introduction to Polymer Science” is currently under development and will be freely accessible to everyone on the internet (see the link and QR code above).
“Polymer Chemistry” (3rd Edition) by Timothy P. Lodge and Paul C. Hiemenz is highly recommended.
“Principles of Polymerization” (4th Edition) by George Odian offers a more comprehensive overview of polymerization systems.
“Polymer Physics” by M. Rubinstein and Ralph H. Colby is essential for an in-depth understanding of the physics of polymers.
“Essentials of Polymer Science and Engineering” (1st Edition) by Paul Painter and Michael M. Coleman is an accessible textbook for beginners.

Publications from this project

Yu Wang,* Manyu Li, Xiang-Sheng Wang, Amanda Gildersleeve, and Nadia Turki. ATRP Kinetic Simulator: An Online Open Resource Educational Tool Using Jupyter Notebook and Google Colaboratory. Journal of Chemical Education 2023 100 (7), 2770-2775, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c01250.

Copyright

This webpage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.