Please bring your safety goggles and a suitable laboratory notebook to your first lab. Attendance at a safety lecture is required for all students who have not attended one during the fall term. Laboratory assignments will be discussed the first day of lab. Plagiarism in the preparation of lab reports should be scrupulously avoided. The definition of plagiarism and the penalties for this practice are described in the Union College Student Handbook.
Polymer chemistry is a blend of physical and organic chemistry.
The lab will have a freer format than others you may have had. If you finish an experiment early one week, you should look ahead to the next week's experiment and help get it set up. Sometimes polymers take several days to dissolve, so solution preparation must be done a few days before your scheduled lab period. Monomers must either be predistilled or run through columns to have inhibitors removed. You may have ideas for further work which I will try to help you accomplish.