OSAKA UNIVERSITY SHORT-TERM STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM _

04s-04
POLYMERS IN DAILY LIFE AND SCIENCE

Sadahito AOSHIMA, Keiichiro ADACHI, Norikazu UEYAMA, Takahiro SATO, and Toshiyuki SHIKATA (Graduate School of Science)

Objective
Polymers, both naturally occurring and synthetic, are among the materials most frequently encountered in everyday life; they are a main constituent of our bodies, food, clothes, and houses. Advances in polymer research have contributed to the phenomenal growth of today's high tech age. This course will present an introduction to polymer science and a brief overview of modern polymer technologies. The main objective of this course is to introduce students, who have little or no chemistry background at a college level but wish to acquire some familiarity with polymers, to basic polymer science including polymer syntheses, structures, and properties. The choice of topics and their order of presentation are indicated below.

Lecture Outline

POLYMER SYNTHESIS (Prof. AOSHIMA):
This lecture focuses on recent advances in polymer synthesis. Several simple experiments and demonstrations will be also carried out in the class, such as synthesis of foamed polyurethane and epoxy resins.

MOLECULAR MOTIONS OF POLYMER CHAINS (Prof. ADACHI):
Purpose of this lecture is to introduce the mechanisms of molecular motions of polymers and the experimental methods for observation of chain dynamics. The lecture also deals with the relationship between physical properties and the mobilities of polymer chains.

NEW-GENERATION POLYMERIZATION CATALYSTS (Prof. UEYAMA):
The lecture highlights recent advances in the search for new catalysts, focusing primarily on the ligand metal complex design and catalyst activity especially in the polymerization of polyethylene and polyolefins with functional groups.

SHAPE AND PROPERTIES OF POLYMER CHAINS (Assoc. Prof. SATO):
Polymer chains, consisting of a huge number of monomer units connected by chemical bonds, can dramatically change their shapes by the rotation around the chemical bonds, and the variety of the shapes gives unique properties to polymers. The lecture introduces basic concepts of the shape and size of polymer chains, and explains their unique properties.

FASCINATING VISCOELASTIC BEHAVIOR OF POLYMERIC MATERIALS (Assoc. Prof. SHIKATA):
This lecture focuses on fascinating viscoelastic behavior such as Weissenberg effect, a tubeless siphon phenomenon, etc., which can not be observed in ordinary low molecular weight materials, but can be frequently observed in many kinds of polymeric materials.

Grading
Class participation 50%
Short papers (5 times) 50%