Synthesis Of Polyethylene Lab Report

The characteristic properties of slime can be explained by polymerisation reactions.

Polymers can be explained most simply by the polymerisation of the molecule ethylene into polyethylene (see figure 1 below).
Figure 1. Polymerisation of polyethylene from ethylene.

In this example, the double bond between the carbon atoms is broken, allowing each carbon atom to form one more bond between another molecule. The double bond between the carbon atoms is weaker because the type of orbital is , compared to a bond between the single-bonded carbon atoms. The reason that the orbital is weaker is because of the way that the electrons orbit the atoms, which is in an hour glass formation. This means that the area that the electrons overlap is above and below the two bonded atoms. Comparatively, the area of overlap between two bonded atoms with a sigma bond is between the two atoms (see figure 2).
Figure 2. Visual representation of sigma and pi bonds between carbon molecules in ethylene.
Ethylene (C2H4) has a C=C covalent double bond (one s bond and one p bond). Each carbon atom uses sp2 hybrid orbitals to form s bonds with the other carbon and with two hydrogens. Sp2 hybrid orbitals mean that there are 3 hybrid sp orbitals formed, with one, unhybridized, p orbital left over (which forms the double bond with the sigma bond). When in the polymerized form, polyethylene has sp3 orbitals instead of sp2 (hence removing the lone pi orbital by hybridizing it) because it needs to make 4 bonds instead of 3. Sp3 orbitals occur when the 2s and 2p orbitals, which have a pair of electrons and two lone electrons respectively, hybridize to form 4 sp3 orbitals containing an electron each. The C-H bonds are therefore formed by the overlap of these orbitals with the orbitals of the corresponding atoms (the 1s orbital for the