Polymer Lab Group Investigation

Polymer Lab Group Investigation

Our problem for our investigation lab was that we didn’t know what was the rebound capabilities for different shapes and sizes of polymers. Our point was that we were going to make six different polymers and they were all going to be different in some way. Our variables were shapes and sizes! We made 1 large sized glue ball polymer, 1 medium sized glue ball polymer, and 1 medium sized glue ball polymer. Those were for testing the size differences. For testing the shape differences we made three small sized polymers one was the shape of a football, one was the shape of a cube, and the last one as the shape of a pyramid! Our hypothesis for the size variable was that the smallest glue ball polymer will bounce higher than the medium and large, because the more mass the less

it will bounce from a still drop without pushing it down onto the table. Our second hypothesis for the variable of the shape was that we thought that the football glue polymer would bounce higher because it has the shape in the family of a ball and that it is used in a sport and will bounce higher than the cube and the pyramid because of that reason.

Chart for Rebound Capability Test

Size and Shape	The Height of the Rebound
Small (20 mL of glue, 1 tsp of borax)-Ball	highest: 10cm average: 9cm
Medium (40 mL of glue, 2 tsp of borax)-Ball	highest: 13cm average: 11cm
Large (80 mL of glue, 4 tsp of borax)-Ball	highest: 14cm average: 9cm
Small (20 mL of glue, 1 tsp of borax)-Cube	highest: 13cm average: 11cm
Small (20 mL of glue, 1 tsp of borax)-Football	highest: 7cm average: 7cm
Small (20 mL of glue, 1 tsp of borax)-Pyramid	highest: 6cm average: 4cm
Extremely large: All of the polymers combined(200 mL of glue, 10 tsp. of borax)-Ball	highest: 11cm

Here is a picture of the large sized glue polymer ball (left) and the medium sized glue polymer ball (right). The balls were so squishy like silly putty. Before they were molded they looked like watered marshmallow fluff! The balls were very sticky until we kept molding it in our hands it lost its' moisture.

Observations of the Rebound Capability Tests:

Variables of Sizes- Our hypothesis was wrong. The largest glue polymer ball had the highest bounce. I think that the force of it pushing down on the table did not matter because it was just so big. Variable of Shapes- Our hypothesis was wrong once again. The cube was the polymer that had bounced the highest which was very surprising to me because it was a cube. The reason I think that it had bounced the highest was because the glue in the polymer makes the polymer so flexible that the cube ended up having a rounded surface after the test.

These tests went very smoothly and I do not think that there was anything we could have changed to make it better! One thing that I had learned was that whenever you would begin molding the polymer it was a really wet that was because there was bubble of the borax solution inside the polymer that hadn’t popped yet. Another thing that I found that helped was after the polymer was dry, to help it mold, you could just dip it in the borax solution to get the better shape!