Polystyrene Reaction

This experiment is used to understand polymers and how they are altered to get a specific product. Polymers are long chain molecules with repeating sequences of large atoms1. Polymers are important in the field of organic chemistry, because they can be changed to create different compounds used in everyday life. Polymers can be found in nature, such as starches, proteins, and cotton. They can also be man-made, such as plastics, Kevlar, and Teflon1. Polymers can be linear, branched, cross-linked, and network1. Polymer are used in medicine, consumer sciences, industries, and sports1. Properties of polymers can be altered by chemicals and structural changes and how the polymer is processed. Polystyrene is an additional polymer, which is a polymer in which the monomers simply add together with no other products formed1. Polystyrene has an array of chain lengths so there is no definite molecular weight of the compound1. Polystyrene is styrene added to a monomer. Styrene can be found in coffee beans, strawberries, and peanuts1. Polystyrene can be found in coat hangers, egg cartons, and plastic cutlery1. In order to synthesis polystyrene, styrene is reacted with benzoyl peroxide and toluene with a reflux apparatus. Toluene is a good solvent to use in this experiment because it is non-polar like styrene and keeps the polymer chain growing. The purpose of this experiment is to make polystyrene by polymerizing styrene by using …show more content…
Then 0.12g of benzoyl peroxide was added. The flask was swirled until it was a homogenous mixture. Next, the reflux apparatus was set up.
After set up was completed, the round bottom flask was heated in a heating mantle attached to a transformer that was set to 80%. The reaction was heated until the reflux began. The reflux was maintained for 30 mins without the condensation ring going above 1/3 of the