• Question: What do you normally do to test the polymer

    Asked by Bethany to Anne, Arthur, Rose, Ruhina, Thomas on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Ruhina Miller

      Ruhina Miller answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Since I mainly use polymers for storage or devices, I check them under a microscope for any observable defects that could cause a problem with my work 🙂

    • Photo: Rose Simnett

      Rose Simnett answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I mostly want to find out information about the molecular structure of the polymer so I use many different techniques to build-up an idea of what the polymer is. Firstly, I use Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC) and Mass Spectrometry (MS) to look at how big the polymer is before I go on to test other properties of the polymers.

    • Photo: Arthur Wilkinson

      Arthur Wilkinson answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      I work on composites (polymer containing another material to give it better properties). A lot of my composites contain carbon fibres which makes them very stiff and strong. We measure these properties on larke testing machines that can stretch or crush our test specimens. Our largest test machine, called JLo, can use 250 tonnes of force to break our composites (which are used to make aircraft).

    • Photo: Thomas Farrugia

      Thomas Farrugia answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      Hi Bethany – I mainly use the polymer to stick onto proteins, and it’s always worked so far! I usually have to make sure that the proteins have been modified successfully prior to sticking on the protein, so I use a mass spectrometer to compare the normal and modified proteins – the modified one is heavier since I’d have stuck some positive groups onto it. I can tell the polymer has stuck onto the protein because the solution goes cloudy due to the formation of nanosized clusters, but I also use Dynamic Light Scattering, a technique that works out the size of particles by seeing how they interact with a laser beam – the particles are around 100 nanometre in size, whilst the proteins are around 3-7 nanometres – super small (but think about this – computers nowadays have parts in processors that are around 14 nanometre!

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