[Demonicgamer666]

I'm trying to think of a good lab project idea involving polymers, but something more than just making them as if it were just a demonstration. I need a variable to test/good guiding question.

I've been recommended a pH dependent polymerization lab idea via Yahoo! Answers, but my research on it has lead to me a lot of pharmaceutical abstracts and an abstract with styrene and its nickel & titanium catalysts that seemed a bit much for me.

Got any ideas? Anything and everything is appreciated!

Below, My Original Yahoo! Answers Post:

I'm looking for some chemistry lab project ideas.

The suggested ones are okay, but not great.

They include the use of a scanning electron microscope to study how a substance looks before and after being exposed to acids and bases, seeing how and at what rate balloons filled with different gases shrink, observing if soil pH is dependent on the type of vegetation being grown, observing the pH and color of a potassium iodide solution that's electrolyzed, and many more.

Before I go any further... I have access to Vernier LabPro Interfaces (which includes a temperature probe, conductivity probe, voltage probe, current sensor, pH probe, colorimeter, CO2 gas sensor, pressure sensor, and light-sensing probe), an infrared spectrophotometer, a calorimeter, and a scanning electron microscope.

I'm all for anything that would have me use the scanning electron microscope, but I suppose I would prefer something that lets me record quantitative data instead of qualitative data.

I also think electrolysis would be neat especially if I got to do some electroplating.

Although, I do have my heart set on doing something with polymerization (most likely of nylon), but I can't think of a guiding question. Also, given the time span (2 months) and the duration of my [2] labs (3 hours) I could easily do more than one polymerization if say, I wanted to compare the polymerization of nylon to polystyrene, polyethylene, or what have you.

That's about it. Let me know if you have any ideas for me and thanks in advance!

[Vidya]

CHECK THIS LINK
http://pslc.ws/macrog/lab/lab01.htm

[Demonicgamer666]

CHECK THIS LINK
http://pslc.ws/macrog/lab/lab01.htm

I've already seen this and it's not 100% what I'm looking for.

I suppose I'll just have to glorify a demonstration lab if I want to work with polymers.